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ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

1880-1905 

BY 

J.  M.  KENNEDY 

AUTHOR    OF    "THE    QUINTESSENCE    OF    NIETZSCHE,"    ETC. 


BOSTON 

SMALL,  MAYNARD  AND  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 

1913 


All  rights  reserved 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    I 

PACK 

INTRODUCTORY — CLASSICISM    AND     ROMANTICISM  3 


CHAPTER    II 

WALTER   PATER 28 

CHAPTER    III 

OSCAR  WILDE 59 

CHAPTER   IV 

THE  "  YELLOW  BOOK  '*  SCHOOL  :  MAX  BEERBOHM, 
ARTHUR  WAUGH,  HUBERT  CRACKANTHORPE- 
LIONEL  JOHNSON,  HENRY  HARLAND,  ARTHUR 
SYMONS,  ERNEST  DOWSON  ....        98 

CHAPTER   V 

AUBREY     BEARDSLEY — WHISTLER — CONTINENTAL 

INFLUENCES       .  .  .  .  .  .      I4I 

V 


281606 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   VI 

PAOS 

GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW  ....      154 


CHAPTER   VII 

H.   G.   WELLS 206 

CHAPTER   VIII 

GEORGE  GISSING 253 


CHAPTER   IX 

W.  B.  YEATS — GEORGE  MOORE — THE  CELTIC  RE VI VAL 
— FIONA  MACLEOD — "  A.  E." — JOHN  DAVID- 
SON— FRANCIS  THOMPSON — W.  L.  COURTNEY 
— LAURENCE  BINYON — ST.  JOHN  HANKIN — 
RICHARD  LE  GALLIENNE — R.  B.  CUNNINGHAME 
GRAHAM 279 

INDEX 337 


VI 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

CHAPTER    I 

INTRODUCTORY — CLASSICISM    AND    ROMANTICISM 

Melancholy  is  the  keynote  of  the  last  genera- 
tion of  EngHsh  literature,  the  period  beginning 
about  1880  and  ending,  let  us  say,  about 
1905.  Artistic  impotence  and  artistic  philistin- 
ism  exercise  even  separately  a  melancholy 
effect ;  but,  taken  together,  the  effect  they 
bring  about  is  lamentable.  The  mere  title 
given  to  one  of  the  most  typical  productions 
of  this  period.  The  Yellow  Book,  is  startlingly 
apt.  The  whole  atmosphere  of  the  time  is 
yellow,  jaundiced.  Weakness  of  will  is  a 
prominent  characteristic  of  those  who,  had  they 
been  stronger  in  this  respect,  might  have 
rescued  the  literature  of  the  age  from  the  mire 
into  which  it  was  gradually  sinking.  But  the 
period  required  stronger  men  to  grapple  with  it. 
It  is,  indeed,  only  too  true  that  the  age 
I 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE       * 

exercises  an  enormous  influence  even  ;  over 
creative  artists.  Only  the  very  strongest  of 
natures  can  overcome  it.  Had  men  like  Wilde, 
Dowson,  and  Lionel  Johnson  been  born  at 
the  time  of  the  Renaissance,  or  in  the  earlier 
part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  they  would 
quite  conceivably  have  lived  to  rank  on  the 
same  plane  as  writers  like  Tasso  and  Pascal ; 
for  the  periods  just  mentioned  were,  on  the 
whole,  favourable  to  the  development  of 
literary  genius.  But  the  last  thirty  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century  were  gloomy  all 
over  Europe,  and  nowhere  more  than  in 
England.  The  age  is  not  only  marked  by 
a  number  of  literary  tragedies — for  it  is  a 
literary  tragedy  when  good  work  goes  wrong, 
as  in  the  case  of  Wilde's  later  books.  The 
age  is  distinguished  by  tragedies,  in  the  purely 
physical  sense  of  the  term,  among  men  of 
letters  and  artists.  Crackanthorpe,  Adams, 
Laurence  Hope,  John  Davidson,  and  St.  John 
Hankin  deliberately  took  their  lives.  Charles 
Conder  died  insane.  Over-indulgence  in  drink 
led  to  the  premature  deaths,  in  deplorable  cir- 
cumstances, of  Lionel  Johnson  and  Ernest 
Dowson.  And  this  list  could  be  extended. 
Why,  then,  should  the  period  have  been  so 

2 


INTRODUCTORY 


melancholy  ?  Why  did  it  drive  so  many  repre- 
sentative writers  to  suicide  in  order  that  they 
might  escape  its  horrors  ;  why  should  it  have 
driven  others  to  drink  and  drugs,  and  a  few 
to  the  lunatic  asylum  ?  In  an  interesting 
little  book  on  the  artistic  movement  of  the 
nineties  Mr.  Blaikie  Murdoch  suggests  that 
the  sixties  "  had  forged  an  art  of  muscles, 
but  the  nineties  produced  an  art  of  nerves"; 
hence  he  attributes  to  the  nineties  greater 
subtlety  and  greater  delicacy.  This,  however, 
does  not  take  us  much  further.  Why  should 
the  sixties  have  been  muscular  and  the  nineties 
delicate  ?  Why  should  the  writers  of  the  period 
just  preceding  the  eighties  and  nineties  have 
been  cheerful,  and  the  writers  immediately 
following  them  afflicted  with  the  blackest  of 
despair  ?  Swinburne  is  cheerful ;  for  he  ap- 
peared to  find  consolation  in  Hellenism,  or  in 
what  he  regarded  as  Hellenism.  Tennyson  is 
cheerful ;  young  Hallam  rests  in  the  Lord.  And 
who  could  be  more  robust,  or  more  philistine, 
than  Browning,  with  his  ''  Take  what  is,  trust 
what  may  be — that's  Life's  true  lesson — eh  ?  "  ? 
Religion  and  Hellenism,  then,  but  chiefly 
religion,  were  the  mainstays  of  creative  artists 
up    to    the    eighties.      In    the    eighties    and 

3 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

nineties,  however,  religion  had  lost  its  influence, 
and  Hellenism  was  misunderstood.  Faith  was 
lacking  ;  and  it  did  not  reappear  until  early 
in  the  twentieth  century,  let  us  say  about 
1905.  The  artists  of  the  period  from  1880  to 
1905  were  caught  in  a  torrent  of  materialism, 
atheism,  idealism,  and  romanticism :  four 
phenomena  which  almost  always  go  together, 
and  which  only  the  strongest  of  strong  char- 
acters can  combat. 

Atheism  in  the  first  place  means  that  the 
reason  has  superseded  the  imagination  ;  but 
all  creative  literature  depends  upon  the  exercise 
of  the  imagination,  the  vision  ;  and  not  at  all 
upon  the  reason.  The  glorious  mythologies 
of  Greece  and  India  may  be  adequately  ex- 
plained away  by  the  reason  ;  and  small  thanks 
to  it  for  its  pains  in  doing  so.  But  by  no 
amount  of  reasoning  could  these  mythologies 
have  been  built  up.  For  this  the  imagination 
was  necessary.  If,  then,  we  find  a  period 
in  history,  such  as  the  Augustan  Age  in  Rome 
or  the  Renaissance  in  modern  Europe,  when 
the  imagination  ranks  higher  than  the  reason, 
we  may  safely  predict  that  such  a  period  will 
be  fruitful  in  creative  literature — in  creative 
art,   in  fact,   of  all  kinds.     If,   on  the  other 


INTRODUCTORY 


hand,  we  find  a  period,  such  as  the  Alexandrian 
age,  when  people  use  their  reason  more  than 
their  imagination,  we  may  say  with  equal 
certainty  that  such  a  period  will  be  noted,  not 
for  creative  literature,  which  will  be  practically 
non-existent,  but  for  scientific  research  and 
the  more  mechanical  sides  of  literary  work, 
such  as  the  writing  of  commentaries  upon  the 
productions  of  classic  authors,  or  the  uninspired 
discussion  and  interpretation  of  works  which 
it  is  no  longer  felt  possible  to  emulate.  If  the 
scientific  researches  undertaken  during  or  just 
previously  to  such  a  period  have  a  tendency 
to  discredit  the  imagination,  then  so  much  the 
worse  for  those  who  are  born  into  that  period 
with  an  innate  impulse  for  creative  work. 

Nothing  spiritual  can  exist  for  long  without 
some  philosophic  basis.  That  basis  may  be  the 
Christian  religion,  as  was  the  case  in  England, 
generally  speaking,  up  to  the  latter  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Or  it  may  be  Hegel,  or 
Plato,  or  Nietzsche,  or  merely  a  frank  hedonism. 
The  philosophical  states  represented  by  these 
names  are  so  many  foundations  upon  which  men 
will  naturally  take  up  their  stand  in  accordance 
with  their  tendencies.  Some  of  these  philo- 
sophies are  likely  to  promote  creative  work  ; 

5 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

others  are  as  likely  to  retard  it.  When  they 
are  one  and  all  examined,  it  will  be  found  they 
must  in  the  end  belong  to  one  of  two  categories  : 
either  they  rely  upon  the  reason  or  they  rely 
upon  the  imagination.  When  we  find  writers 
express  a  liking  for  one  or  other  of  these  philo- 
sophies, or  when  we  find  them  influenced  by 
strong  believers  in  these  philosophies,  we  can 
generally  tell  what  the  artistic  fate  of  such 
writers  will  be. 

Now,  it  is  important  to  note  that  the 
philosophies  most  in  vogue  during  the  eighties 
and  nineties  were  those  that  tended  to  set  the 
reason  above  the  imagination ;  and  literature 
suffered  accordingly.  The  writer  who,  more  than 
any  one  else,  influenced  the  literary  movement 
of  the  eighties,  was  Walter  Pater,  and  Pater 
himself  was  dominated  from  beginning  to  end 
by  the  literary  influence  of  Ruskin  and  by  the 
philosophy  of  Plato.  And  what  effect  this 
philosophy  had  on  his  work  may  be  easily  seen 
by  any  one  who  can  appreciate  the  pernicious 
influence  of  romanticism  on  literary  endeavour, 
as  opposed  to  the  classicism  which  it  is  the  duty 
of  every  cultured  writer  to  uphold. 

Before  we  go  on,  however,  we  must  come  to 
an    understanding    regarding    the    use    of   the 

6 


INTRODUCTORY 


words  classicism  and  romanticism,   which  are 
now,    like    so    many    other   terms,    in    danger 
of  being  abused  by  careless  thinkers.     When 
we  speak  of  classic  work  we  mean,  or  should 
mean,  work  modelled  on  the  style  of  the  best 
Greek  and  Latin  authors  :    works  in  which  the 
ideas  expressed  are  correctly  moulded  to  the 
form  of  their  expression,  in  which  the  thoughts 
are  clearly  and  simply  outlined,  and  in  which 
certain    definite    artistic    canons    are    strictly 
adhered  to.     We  must  follow  not  merely  the 
letter  of   the  ancients — for  we  shall  attain  no 
particular  end  if  we  do — but  their  spirit ;  we  must 
definitely  assume  that  the  spirit  of  the  Greek 
and  Latin  authors  is  our  highest  literary  ideal. 
To  those  who  object  to  the  classics  on  various 
grounds — the  most  common  objection  at  the 
present  day  being  that  they  are  *'  out  of  date  *' 
or    not     *'  practical ''     or     "  useful ''     in    the 
struggle  for  existence — it  can  only  be  answered 
that   such   objections,    or   rather   excuses,    are 
insufficient.     Through    most    of    our    western 
European  literature  we  find  a  definite  tradition, 
a  high  standard  which  was  laid  down  by  the 
writers    of    the    two   ancient    States.     It    has 
been   the   aim   of  the   best   authors   in   every 
period   to   carry   on   this   tradition ;     and,    in 

7 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

spite  of  numerous  apparent  contradictions  and 
waverings,  there  have  been  men  in  every  age 
who  did  aim  at  the  high  ideal  which  came 
down  to  us  from  classic  times. 

On  the  other  hand,  this  ideal  has  often  been 
opposed  and  scoffed  at.  It  has  been  opposed 
by  those  men  who  played  the  part  in  literature 
that  Liberalism  has  done  in  politics :  men 
who  saw  nothing  in  the  influence  of  tradition 
in  art  or  literature,  who  acted  as  if  the  world 
were  re-created  from  day  to  day  and  year  to 
year,  who  chafed  under  the  artistic  discipline 
to  which  their  opponents,  the  classicists, 
willingly  submitted.  These  were  the  men, 
too,  who  desired  free  play  for  '*  individuality," 
who  thought  that  every  author  was  quite 
right  in  laying  down  his  own  artistic  canons  ; 
the  men  who  experimented  with  curious  metric 
forms,  and  who  could  not  understand  that  their 
work  was  of  necessity  related  to  the  work  of 
previous  writers  and  to  the  work  of  the  writers 
who  would  follow  them.  These  were  the  men, 
again,  who  rushed  into  the  opposite  extreme 
as  regards  style.  Their  ideas  were  not  ex- 
pressed with  the  simplicity  of  diction  that 
characterised  the  authors  who  followed  classic 
models.     In  their  works  we  find  puny  thoughts 

8 


INTRODUCTORY 


enveloped  in  mystic,  florid,  symbolic  language. 
In  accordance  with  the  rest  of  their  character, 
their  ideals  are  not  classic  ideals  :  they  are 
what  we  moderns  call  ''  cloudy ''  in  their 
conceptions  of  the  world  and  of  life,  though 
the  ancients  would  probably  have  given  a 
harsher  name  to  this  characteristic  of  theirs. 
This  latter  class  constitutes  the  romanticists. 

The  first  general  use  of  the  word  ''  romanti- 
cist *'  is  found  in  connection  with  a  German 
school  of  writers  which  flourished  towards  the 
latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  in- 
cluded, to  mention  only  three  of  the  best- 
known  names,  Tieck,  F.  Schlegel,  and  Novalis. 
These  writers  did  not  seek  their  inspiration 
in  classical  sources  ;  the  origin  of  such  inspira- 
tion as  they  could  claim  was  pointed  out 
unerringly  by  Heinrich  Heine.  They  delved 
into  the  works  of  mediaeval  chroniclers  and 
"  romance  *'  writers  ;  the  very  writers  who, 
of  all  others,  are  most  distinguished  by  their 
failure  to  appreciate  the  classics,  the  chroniclers 
of  chivalric  incidents  and  the  romantico-chivalric 
spirit,  a  spirit  which  was  not  assailed  throughout 
Europe  until  Cervantes  annihilated  it  once 
and  for  all  in  one  of  the  most  powerful  of 
satires.    This  German  revolt  against  the  classics, 

9 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

typified  in  the  works  of  the  authors  already 
referred  to,  was  nominally  directed  against 
what  they  were  pleased  to  call  the  *'  pedantry  *' 
of  the  French  poetry  of  the  eighteenth  century 
and  the  latter  part  •  of  the  seventeenth,  as 
typified,  say,  in  Corneille,  Racine,  and  Boileau. 
But,  in  being  directed  as  it  was  against  these 
great  representatives  of  the  classic  tradition, 
it  struck  at  the  roots  of  all  true  literary  ideals. 
The  models  handed  down  to  us  by  Rome  and 
Greece  were  abandoned  for  models  handed 
down  to  us  by  the  Middle  Ages. 

Now,  what  particularly  distinguishes  the 
mediaeval  romances  is  the  sentimentality  and 
idealism  of  their  substance  and  the  florid 
style  in  which  their  substance  is  enveloped. 
Such  stories  as  the  Amadis  of  Gaul,  or  tales 
like  the  Gesta  Romanorum,  may  undoubtedly 
be  found  interesting  by  man}^  readers.  From 
an  historical  point  of  view,  for  example,  they 
throw  considerable  light  on  the  manners  and 
customs  of  the  periods  in  which  they  were 
written.  But  by  the  artistic  mind  they  can 
never  be  regarded  as  artistic  productions. 
Their  lack  of  unity,  indifferent  ideas,  and  bad 
style  are  not  atoned  for  by  whatever  merits 
they  possess  for  the  historian  or  the  sociologist. 

lO 


INTRODUCTORY 


And,  while  these  traits  are  particularly  char- 
acteristic of  mediaeval  romances,  other  branches 
of  literature  caught  the  infection  and  likewise 
show  a  distinct  non-classical  tendency.  Take 
a  number  of  writers  at  haphazard  :  John 
Donne,  Plautus,  Gongora,  George  Herbert, 
Calderon,  Milton,  Ovid,  Racine,  Boiardo,  and 
Theocritus,  all  of  whom  are  recognised  to  be 
great  literary  masters.  Yet  even  an  unob- 
servant critic,  if  such  a  contradiction  in  terms 
may  be  allowed  to  pass,  can  hardly  fail  to 
notice  the  enormous  difference  in  the  spirit 
of  these  writers.  Compare,  for  example,  Cal- 
deron with  Plautus.  As  Heine  very  properly 
remarks  :  *'  The  poetry  of  the  Middle  Ages 
is  most  clearly  characterised  by  Calderon,  and 
in  its  two  main  impulses :  chivalry  and 
monasticism.  The  pious  comedies  of  the 
Castilian  poet-priest,  whose  poetical  fancies 
were  ecclesiastically  fumigated  and  sprinkled 
with  holy  water,  were  now  imitated  in  Germany 
in  all  their  sacred  grandezza,  all  their  sacerdotal 
luxury,  all  their  exalted  foolishness ;  and  there 
arose  among  us  a  varicoloured,  extravagantly- 
profound  school  of  poetry  with  which  people 
became  mystically  infatuated.''* 

*  H.  Heine  :    Die  Romantische  Schule,  Bk.  i. 

II 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

In  Plautus,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  a 
dramatist  who  is,  it  is  true,  a  rough  diamond  ; 
but  who  nevertheless  always  keeps  in  mind 
certain  well-understood  literary  traditions.  One 
has  only  to  compare  the  form  and  spirit  of 
his  Miles  Gloriostis  with  Calderon's  La  Vida 
es  Sueno  to  observe  the  enormous  difference 
between  classicism  and  romanticism.  A  com- 
parison in  a  like  sense  of  Boiardo  with 
Theocritus,  of  Donne  with  Ovid,  of  George 
Herbert  with  Racine,  of  Gongora  with  Milton, 
cannot  but  impress  even  a  careless  student 
in  an  equal  degree.  Again,  in  the  famous 
Nuptial  Song  of  Catullus  there  is  a  typically 
pure  and  simple  classical  passage  on  a  flower  : 

Ut  flos  in  saeptis  secretus  nascitur  hortis, 
Ignotus  pecori,  nullo  convolsus  aratro. 
Quern  mulcent  aurae,  firmat  sol,  educat  imber  : 
Multi  ilium  pueri,  multae  optavere  puellae  ; 
Idem  cum  tenui  carptus  defloruit  ungui, 
Nulli  ilium  pueri,  nullae  optavere  puellae  : 
Sic  virgo,  dum  intacta  manet,  dum  cara  suis  est; 
Cum  castum  amisit  polluto  corpore  florem. 
Nee  pueris  iocunda  manet,  nee  cara  puellis. 

So  beautiful  a  passage  would  naturally  be 
repeatedly  imitated,  and  this  is  what  it  becomes 
in  the  florid  language  of  Tasso  : 

Deh  mira  (egli  cantd)  spuntar  la  rosa 
Dal  verde  suo  modesta  e  verginella, 

f2 


INTRODUCTORY 


Che  mezzo  aperta  ancora  e  mezzo  ascosa  ; 
Quanto  si  mostra  men,  tanto  e  piu  bella. 
Ecco  poi  nudo  il  sen  gia  baldanzosa 
Dispiega  :   ecco  poi  langue,  e  non  par  quella  ; 
Quella  non  par,  che  desiata  avanti 
Fu  da  mille  donzelle,  e  mille  amanti. 

Cosi  trapassa  al  trapassar  d'  un  giorno, 
Delia  vita  mortale  il  fiore  e  '1  verde  : 
Ne  perche  faccia  indietro  april  ritorno. 
Si  rinfiora  ella  mai  ne  si  rinverde. 
Cogliam  la  rosa  in  sul  mattino  adorno 
Di  questo  di  che  tosto  il  seren  perde  ; 
Cogliam  d'Amor  la  rosa  :    amiamo  or  quando 
Esser  si  puote  riamato  amando.* 

Tasso,  it  will  be  seen,  was  familiar  with 
the  classics.  He  studied  them,  he  imitated 
them  ;  and  yet  he  could  not  grasp  the  spirit 
of  these  few  simple  lines  of  Catullus  without 
enveloping  them  in  a  florid  metaphor  which 
was  not  meant  to  belong  to  them  at  all.  Why  ? 
Merely  because  Tasso  had  not  lifted  himself 
above  his  age,  as  Goethe  and  Heine  did  later 
on.  He  had  not  submitted  himself  to  the 
discipline  which  a  classical  training  necessarily 
presupposes ;  he  could  not  restrain  those 
characteristics  which  he  possessed  in  common 
with  Calderon.  The  classic  in  his  hands 
becomes  the  romantic,  the  simple  becomes 
the  fantastic.     This  is,  in  truth,  what  generally 

*  La  Gerusalemme  Liberata,  Canto  XVI. 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

happens  when  the  romanticist  finds  himself 
out  of  his  depth  ;  and,  if  we  wish  for  a  musical 
analogy  to  this  literary  one,  we  shall  find  it 
in  Wagner's  compositions.  The  simple  melody 
is  enveloped  in  a  gigantic  maze  of  harmony 
to  such  an  extent  that  the  listener  becomes 
confused,  and  remains  so  until  he  accustoms 
himself  to  the  tricks  of  the  magician. 

In  criticising  mediaeval  romances  it  would, 
of  course,  be  insufficient  to  say  that  they  are 
not  "  true  to  nature  ''  ;  for  it  is  not  the  duty 
of  the  artist — far  from  it — to  reproduce  nature 
with  fidelity.  But  it  is  his  duty  to  remember 
that  he  is  living  on  earth  and  not  in  the  clouds  ; 
and  this  is  exactly  where  the  romance-writers 
fail.  They  fail  because  the  very  religion  they 
profess  teaches  them  to  deny  the  primitive 
and  most  character-forming  instincts  of  their 
species.  They  were  afraid  to  perform  the 
task  of  the  artist,  viz.,  to  face  reality  and 
interpret  it.  They  turned  and  fled  from  reality 
and  constructed  for  themselves  a  new  earth  : 
an  earth  wherein  the  men  and  women  differed 
as  much  from  the  men  and  women  to  whom 
we  are  accustomed  as  the  Ring  of  the  Nie- 
belungs  differs  from  Carmen.  We  find  men 
and  women  adorned  with  virtues  which  have 

14 


INTRODUCTORY 


no  parallel  in  real  life,  and  losing  themselves 
amidst  grotesque  clouds  of  idealistic  fancies 
which  have  no  parallel  in  the  solar  system. 

The  classics  differ  entirely  from  this.  We 
cannot  imagine  Catullus  or  Horace  inditing 
the  kind  of  love-songs  sung  by  the  troubadours  ; 
the  thing  is  unthinkable.  Despite  what  some 
critics  refer  to  as  the  ''  freshness  "  of  Philippe 
de  Commynes  and  Villehardouin,  we  cannot 
help  regretting  that  the  masterly  mind  of 
Thucydides  could  not  have  dealt  with  the  Italian 
expedition  of  Charles  VIII,  or  that  the  pro- 
found insight  of  Tacitus  could  not  have  still 
further  immortalised  itself  by  leaving  us  a 
few  cutting  character  sketches  of  the  leaders 
of  the  Fourth  Crusade. 

Such  a  vain  wish  is  inspired  by  no  mere 
whim.  The  classical  authors  would  have  been 
incapable  of  enveloping  historical  incidents  in 
cloudy  romantic  ideals ;  of  distorting  the 
characters  of  men  to  suit  the  theological  views 
of  the  age.  No  classicist  is  ever  afraid  to  face 
reality  ;  he  says  ''  yea  '*  to  life,  to  use  Nietzsche's 
expression.  This,  of  course,  does  not  mean 
that  he  reproduces  life  with  exquisite  fidelity, 
which  is  the  business  of  the  colour-photographer. 
It    does    mean    that,    while    the    romanticist 

15 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

shrinks  from  reality,  is  afraid  of  reality,  and 
surrounds  reality  with  an  exaggerated  idealistic 
halo,  the  classicist  faces  reality  and  deals 
with  it  as  the  sculptor  fashions  his  marble 
or  the  potter  handles  his  clay — in  other  words, 
he  re-creates  reality. 

It  is  nevertheless  quite  possible  to  be  a 
romantic  realist.  Emile  Zola,  for  example, 
as  all  readers  of  his  novels  must  observe, 
takes  unwearying  pains  to  depict  a  scene  with 
the  utmost  minuteness.  The  reader  is  not 
permitted  to  pass  on  from  incident  to  incident 
until  every  trifling  detail  has  been  brought 
to  his  notice  with  almost  pre-Raphaelite 
fidelity — those  who  have  read  Lourdes  or  La 
Debacle  will  easily  recollect  instances  of  this 
characteristic.  Such  a  determination  to  set 
reality  on  paper,  however,  is  not  a  mark  of 
the  classicist.  It  does  not  indicate  that  Zola 
has  mastered  reality,  but  simply  that  reality 
has  fascinated  him  as  a  snake  fascinates  a 
bird.  He  is  overpowered  by  reality  and  finds 
himself  unable  to  select,  which  is  a  preliminary 
requisite  for  the  re-creation  of  reality  as  the 
task  is  performed  by  the  true  artist.  Many 
of  Mr.  Shaw's  long  prefaces  to  his  plays  are 
almost   Zolaesque   in    their  detail,  and  quite 

l6 


INTRODUCTORY 


as  ineffective.  Mr.  Shaw,  it  is  true,  endeavours 
to  do  for  the  spiritual  world  what  Zola  has 
done  for  the  physical  world,  and  it  may  be 
thought  that  the  comparison  is  ill-judged  on 
that  account.  But  I  make  the  comparison 
because  it  seems  to  me  that  the  error  of  both 
writers  arises  from  the  same  source :  their 
disregard  of  classicism  and  their  firm  adherence 
to  romanticism. 

We  have  seen,  then,  how  the  term  romanticism 
arose,  and  to  what  school  of  German  writers 
it  was  applied  before  its  use  became  general 
among  psychologists  to  designate  the  artistic 
traits  of  a  certain  weak  type  of  mind.  It 
should  be  further  remembered  that,  as  a  result 
of  the  Napoleonic  wars,  a  national  support  was 
given  to  the  romantic  movement  in  Germany. 
Writers  of  all  kinds,  all  those  who  were  looked 
upon  as  creative  artists,  had  behind  them 
the  full  sympathy  of  the  populace  when  they 
refused  to  follow  French  literary  models.  The 
mass  of  the  people  knew  little  and  cared  less 
about  high  classical  ideals  in  literature  and 
art ;  but  they  could  appreciate  a  defeat  in 
battle.  It  mattered  little  to  them — for  who 
was  there  to  point  it  out  to  them  ? — that 
Germany  was  a  barbarous  country  as  com- 
2  17 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

pared  with  France,  that  culture  must  come 
to  them,  if  it  came  at  all,  from  beyond  the 
Rhine.  These  things  were  lost  sight  of  at  a 
time  when  both  art  and  nationality  were 
united  on  the  side  of  philistinism. 

Although  it  is  true  that  Lessing  had  taken 
up  the  cudgels  against  French  literature  and 
the  French  drama,  he  should  not  on  that 
account  be  numbered  among  the  romanticists. 
He  made  strenuous  endeavours,  endeavours 
which  resulted  in  his  premature  death,  to 
show  his  fellow-authors  that,  if  they  did 
abandon  French  literature,  they  must  replace 
it  by  the  culture  of  the  best  ages  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  They  did  not  do  so.  They  im- 
mersed themselves,  as  Heine  pointed  out  later 
with  much  bitterness  of  spirit,  in  the  wells 
of  mediaeval  poetry  and  romances  ;  and  those 
who  did  turn  to  the  literature  of  Greece  and 
Rome  did  not  trouble  to  find  out — they  were 
perhaps  incapable  of  distinguishing — ^what  were 
the  best  cultural  epochs  of  the  two  States. 
They  went  back  no  further  than  the  Alexandrian 
period  of  the  second  and  third  centuries  of  our 
era — to  the  very  period,  in  other  words,  when 
that  which  we  now  call  romanticism  had  taken 
a  firm  hold  of  what  was  left  of  Greek  and 

i8 


INTRODUCTORY 


Roman  literature,  a  period  when  the  influence 
of  the  neo-Platonists  was  predominant,  a  period 
when  the  real  classical  literature  had  de- 
generated almost  beyond  recognition.  Readers 
of  Nietzsche*s  essays.  We  Philologists  and 
On  the  Future  of  our  Educational  Institu- 
tions, will  well  remember  the  scorn  with 
which  he  reproaches  his  countrymen  with 
neglecting  the  best  and  fastening  with  avidity 
on  the  worst  that  classical  times  had  to  offer. 
The  Alexandrian  age,  indeed,  can  hardly 
properly  be  called  classical  at  all :  it  was  a 
period  of  transition  between  the  abandonment 
of  paganism  and  the  first  establishment  of 
Christian  thought — a  period  of  transition,  in 
other  words,  between  classicism  and  roman- 
ticism, with  the  influence  of  romanticism 
growing  stronger  from  year  to  year. 

If  we  are  called  upon  to  indicate  the  main 
characteristic  of  this  age,  we  may  say  at  once 
that  it  was  an  age  which  was  governed  entirely 
by  its  neo-Platonist  outlook,  an  age  in  which 
men  were  deeply  engrossed  in  Platonic  studies. 
It  was,  in  consequence,  an  age  which  was 
entirely  out  of  touch  with  reality,  an  age 
which  was  dominated  by  false  ideals.  For 
the  Platonists  were  the  Christians  of  antiquity. 

19 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Although  it  is  impossible  to  set  Plato  and 
Aristotle  in  juxtaposition  at  every  point  in 
their  philosophies,  we  can  certainly  juxtapose 
them  in  this  respect  :  Aristotle,  like  Nietzsche 
himself,  had  his  feet  firmly  planted  on  the 
world  in  which  we  live,  and  his  energies  were, 
like  Nietzsche^s,  directed  towards  improving 
the  position  of  man  in  this  world  and  helping 
him  to  re-interpret  nature  to  this  end.  Plato, 
on  the  contrary,  was  always  concerned  with 
unreal  worlds,  and  he  has  in  consequence 
always  been  the  mainstay  of  romanticists  and 
idealists.  At  the  present  time,  for  instance, 
Germany  is  distinguished  by  the  strength  of 
its  romantic  movement  and  the  setback  which 
has  been  given  to  classicism,  and  this  coincides 
— strangely  enough,  perhaps,  to  those  who 
have  not  taken  this  effect  of  Plato  into  con- 
sideration— with  a  pronounced  revival  of 
Platonic  studies  there.  Again,  to  go  further 
back,  the  influence  of  Plato  was  predominant 
from  the  Alexandrian  period  down  to  the 
period  immediately  preceding  the  Renaissance, 
and  with  the  Renaissance  itself  Plato's  influence 
on  the  thought  of  the  time  gradually  became 
less  and  less.  Aristotle,  on  the  other  hand, 
came  into  prominence  with  Thomas  Aquinas 

20 


INTRODUCTORY 


and  was  one  of  the  chief  classical  authors 
studied  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the 
period  of  the  Renaissance.  And,  to  take  the 
movement  with  which  we  are  directly  con- 
cerned, the  influence  of  Plato  on  Wilde  would 
be  apparent  to  any  one  acquainted  with  the 
works  of  both  men,  even  if  Wilde  had  not 
himself  admitted  it  in  Intentions  and  in  the 
De  Profundis. 

There  was  one  man,  however,  who  strove 
to  combat  the  romantic  movement  in  modern 
Europe,  and  to  check  the  influence  of  the 
Platonic  spirit  :  and  this  was  Goethe.  There 
are  few  more  fascinating  studies  than  the 
character  of  this  man  ;  for  it  is  of  profound 
interest  not  only  to  the  literary  historian  but 
also  to  the  psychologist.  He  represents  at 
once  the  romanticist  and  the  classicist,  and 
an  examination  of  his  intellectual  life  would 
suffice  to  show  the  distinctions,  both  broad 
and  minute,  separating  the  one  from  the  other. 
For  such  a  detailed  examination  of  Goethe 
this  is,  of  course,  not  the  place  ;  but  a  few 
indications  may  be  given. 

Every  artist  is  distinguished  by  a  superfine 
sensibility,  a  peculiar  nervous  condition,  and 
the  greater  the  genius,  as  a  rule,  the  greater 

21 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

the  sensitiveness.  Dryden's  old  tag  about 
great  wits  being  near  allied  to  madness  was 
simply  one  way — a  rough  and  approximate 
way — of  describing  a  phenomenon  which  has 
been  observed  in  all  ages,  though  the  psycholo- 
gists of  our  own  time  would  naturally  divide 
madness  into  many  different  categories.  The 
**  crankiness "  of  the  genius  is,  of  course, 
merely  the  outcome  of  his  extreme  sensitiveness 
and  his  profound  penetration  into  men  and 
things.  Such  a  sensitiveness  is,  as  might  be 
expected,  more  apparent  in  youth  than  in  later 
years.  This  youthful  period  of  inner  tension — 
the  Promethean  period  of  the  artist,  as  an 
Italian  psychologist  has  aptly  called  it — results 
in  one  of  two  things  :  either  the  artist  masters 
his  sensitiveness  and  becomes  what  the  psycho- 
logist calls  mature,  or  his  sensitiveness  over- 
powers him  and  he  does  not  reach  artistic 
maturity  at  all.  Every  real  artist  must  pass 
through  this  Promethean  period.  Those  who 
master  their  sensitiveness  at  the  end  of  such 
a  period — the  duration  of  which  naturally 
varies  in  accordance  with  the  character  of  the 
individual — ^become  classicists  ;  those  who  fail 
to  do  so  remain  romanticists.  For  a  most 
important  trait  of  the  classicist,  and  one  which 

22 


INTRODUCTORY 


cannot  be  overlooked,  is  his  unity,  the  complete 
harmony  existing  between  mind  and  body, 
his  complete  self-control  and  well-developed 
will  power  ;  while  the  romanticist  is  equally 
distinguished  by  lack  of  unity,  lack  of  will, 
and  a  resultant  disharmony  of  thought.  More 
than  this  :  such  a  disharmony,  in  the  case 
of  an  unusually  sensitive  artist  who  is  unable 
to  control  his  emotions,  will  lead  in  many 
instances  to  mental  and  physical  wreckage. 
We  can  find  two  such  shipwrecked  romanticists 
in  our  own  literature,  Cowper  and  Oscar  Wilde. 
Cowper's  frequent  attacks  of  "  insanity  "  are 
of  considerable  interest  to  the  psychologist,  but 
hardly  more  so  than  an  investigation  of  the 
causes  of  the  offence  which  led  Wilde  to 
Wandsworth  Prison  and  Reading  Gaol. 

It  is  significant  of  the  whole  romantic  move- 
ment in  Germany  and  England  that  the  artists 
of  the  time  could  not  control  themselves. 
From  a  purely  artistic  standpoint  it  is  painful 
to  examine  the  spiritual  lives  of  men  like 
Coleridge,  Keats,  Shelley,  the  Schlegels,  Tieck, 
Kotzebue,  and  Kleist.  We  are  always  aware 
of  this  want  of  spiritual  harmony,  this  chaos 
of  undisciplined  emotions  :  it  is  like  listening 
to    a    badly-played    tune    on    a    badly-tuned 

23 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

piano.  There  were  men  among  the  roman- 
ticists, notably  Byron  and  Schiller,  who  did 
succeed  in  mastering  themselves  to  some  extent 
and  taking  a  pace  or  two  towards  classical 
ideals  ;  but  fortunately  there  was  one  man — 
Goethe — who  mastered  himself  completely,  and 
developed  an  almost  Olympic  classicism  out 
of  his  romanticism. 

As  a  young  man  Goethe  experienced  the 
full  force  of  that  inward  battle  which  makes 
or  mars  the  artist.  If  we  had  not  direct 
testimony  regarding  him  to  this  effect,  we 
could  easily  deduce  it  from  his  works  them- 
selves. Compare,  for  example,  the  romantic 
Goetz,  which  he  wrote  when  he  was  twenty- 
two  and  recast  when  he  was  twenty-four, 
with  the  Hermann  und  Dorothea,  written  when 
he  was  nearly  fifty ;  or  compare  the  early 
romantic  Werther  novels  with  the  later  masterly 
psychological  analysis  which  we  know  in 
English  as  The  Elective  Affinities.  In  all 
Goethe's  important  early  works  we  observe 
the  romantic  influence  ;  but  we  see  that  in 
his  later  works  he  has  entirely  shaken  this 
influence  off.  His  mind  had  gradually  passed 
through  its  storm-and-stress  period,  and  the 
complete  artist  emerged  from  the  struggle. 

24 


INTRODUCTORY 


Goethe  and  Heine,  however,  were  the  only 
two  poets  of  the  time  who  conquered  the 
romanticist  within  themselves,  and  they  were 
less  appreciated  abroad  than  their  romantic 
competitors  and  detractors.  Goethe,  the  more 
classic  of  the  two,  was  unable  to  stem  the 
romantic  tide  which  began  in  France  with 
Lamartine  and  Victor  Hugo,  both  of  whom, 
together  with  Alfred  de  Musset,  exercised  an 
enormous  influence  on  French  literature  of  the 
last  century,  an  influence  that  gave  rise  in  its 
turn  to  the  still  more  decadent  influence  of 
Baudelaire  and  Verlaine.  From  these  sources 
the  slow  poison  of  romanticism  spread  to  Eng- 
land, where  it  was  soon  being  absorbed.  The 
times  were,  indeed,  propitious  enough;  for  in 
the  nineteenth  century  England  was  dominated 
in  politics,  science,  and  literature  by  the 
"  Liberal ''  trend  of  thought  which  is  the 
customary  accompaniment  of  romanticism. 

When  writing  some  time  ago  on  the  subject 
of  Tory  Democracy,  I  pointed  out  how  political 
Liberalism  was  usually  associated  with  idealism 
and  romanticism ;  but  it  is  worth  adding  that 
Liberalism,  assuming  the  general  thought  of 
a  particular  period  to  be  '*  Liberal,'*  is  also 
associated  with  a  romantic  influence  on  litera- 
ls 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

ture.  Liberalism  is,  in  the  first  place,  based 
on  a  combination  of  those  philosophies  which 
I  have  already  referred  to  in  this  chapter  as 
appealing  to  the  reason  rather  than  to  the 
imagination,  and  in  the  second  place  it  has 
always  appealed  in  England,  as  a  political  sys- 
tem, to  the  middle  classes,  who  are  notorious  as 
having  invariably  exhibited  the  least  possible 
sympathy  with  classicists  in  any  field  of  art. 
The  essential  principles  of  Locke  and  Rousseau, 
to  take  an  example,  may  be  found  in  Plato  ; 
and  it  is  largely  Locke  and  Rousseau  who  are 
responsible  for  the  principles  underlying  modern 
bourgeois  democracy.  It  is  interesting  to  note 
that  the  writers  of  the  more  romantic  and 
idealistic  books  published  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  when  they  took  any  part  in  politics, 
usually  ranged  themselves  on  the  Liberal  side  ; 
and  it  is  also  a  matter  of  psychological  notoriety 
that  science  itself  became  more  and  more 
democratised  as  the  nineteenth  century  pro- 
gressed. 

A  typically  unsound  idealist  who  will  naturally 
occur  to  the  reader  is  John  Ruskin.  Our 
present  literary  inquiry,  however,  does  not 
concern  Ruskin,  who  only  indirectly  influenced 
the  revived  romantic  movement  of  the  quarter- 

26 


INTRODUCTORY 


century  beginning  about  1880  ;  but  the  writer 
who  may  be  said  to  have  initiated  this  movement 
was  a  man  whose  works  show  distinct  traces 
of  Ruskin's  influence,  viz.,  Walter  Pater.  The 
study  of  the  last  generation  of  English  literature, 
then,  begins  with  Pater. 


27 


CHAPTER    II 

WALTER     PATER 

Reference  has  already  been  made  to  the 
Promethean  period  of  the  artist ;  but  it  is 
only  the  higher  classes  of  artists  who  are  ac- 
quainted at  all  with  the  struggle  that  is  taking 
place  within  them.  There  are  now  no  artists 
so  classic  that  they  think  of  romanticism 
merely  with  contempt  and  never  feel  them- 
selves oppressed  by  romantic  fancies — as 
Nietzsche  has  said,  we  all  begin  by  being 
decadents.  There  are,  however,  many  artists 
who  are  so  romantic  at  the  beginning  that 
the  higher  ideals  of  classicism  seldom  come 
within  their  range  of  vision,  and  they  follow 
the  path  of  the  romanticist  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  with  only  an  occasional  tremor. 
To  this  latter  class  belong  most  of  the  English 
writers  of  the  last  generation.  Crackanthorpe, 
W.  B.  Yeats,  and  Le  Gallienne,  for  example, 
show  themselves  in  their  works  to  have  been 
essentially  romanticists  at  the  very  beginning, 
28 


WALTER  PATER 


and  such  they  continued  to  be.  Those  inward 
struggles  which  we  see  so  well  represented  in 
Goethe  were  unknown  to  them.  We  shall 
therefore  have  more  respect  for  those  among 
these  writers  who,  while  continually  displaying 
romantic  influences  and  tendencies,  neverthe- 
less showed  that  they  were  not  unaware  of 
classicism,  that  they  sought  to  achieve  some 
higher  aim  than  that  which  the  average  romanti- 
cist has  in  view.  Five  such  men  in  this  period 
stand  out  prominently  :  Walter  Pater,  Oscar 
Wilde,  John  Davidson,  Arthur  Symons,  and 
George  Gissing.  Of  the  five,  Davidson  probably 
approached  most  nearly  to  the  classical  ideal. 

Pater  himself  influenced  the  literary  move- 
ment of  the  eighties  and  nineties  almost 
against  his  will ;  and  his  habits  and  general 
characteristics  make  him  a  curious  and  inter- 
esting study.  Never  at  any  time  did  he 
advance  extravagant  claims  in  his  own  behalf, 
whatever  may  be  said  of  the  claims  put  forward 
in  his  behalf  by  his  admirers.  He  was  of  a 
most  retiring  disposition,  and  avoided  com- 
pany. He  did,  it  is  true,  make  a  certain 
number  of  literary  and  artistic  acquaintances, 
including  several  of  the  pre-Raphaelites  ;  but 
his    extreme     shyness    prevented    him     from 

29 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

acquiring  certain  accomplishments  which  were 
indispensable  to  a  critic  in  his  position.  For 
instance,  he  was  never  able  to  speak  a  foreign 
language,  not  even  French.  Although,  there- 
fore, he  gives  us  many  apt  remarks  on  music, 
the  music  in  words  was  beyond  him.  He 
spent  many  vacations  in  Germany  with  his 
sisters,  but  he  never  succeeded  in  being  able 
to  speak  German.  To  the  last  he  remained 
a  typical  Englishman  in  that  he  could  converse 
only  in  his  own  language. 

Not  that  Pater  ever  wished  to  converse 
much  at  all.  Always  unassuming  and  not 
over-talkative  in  the  company  of  his  friends, 
he  was  still  more  retiring  in  the  presence  of 
strangers.  And  Mr.  Arthur  Symons  has  told 
us  what  painful  efforts  it  cost  Pater  to  lecture 
on  one  occasion  at  Toynbee  Hall :  an  effort 
which  was  painful  not  only  to  Pater  but  to 
those  who  had  come  to  listen  to  him.  Much 
of  this  sensitiveness  may  be  explained  by  his 
own  outlook  on  the  world  ;  or  rather  it  explains 
his  outlook  on  the  world  and  his  canons  of 
taste.  He  expressed  himself  wonderfully  well 
on  this  point  in  the  remarkable  essay  which 
forms  the  "  conclusion "  to  his  Studies  in 
the  Renaissance  :    *'  The  service  of  philosophy, 

30 


WALTER   PATER 


of  speculative  culture,  towards  the  human 
spirit,  is  to  rouse,  to  startle  it  to  a  life  of  con- 
stant and  eager  observation.  Every  moment 
some  form  grows  perfect  in  hand  or  face ; 
some  tone  on  the  hills  or  the  sea  is  choicer 
than  the  rest ;  some  mood  of  passion  or  insight 
or  intellectual  excitement  is  irresistibly  real 
and  attractive  to  us — for  that  moment  only. 
Not  the  fruit  of  experience,  but  experience 
itself,  is  the  end.  A  counted  number  of  pulses 
only  is  given  to  us  of  a  variegated,  dramatic 
life.  How  may  we  see  in  them  all  that  is 
to  be  seen  in  them  by  the  finest  senses  ?  How 
shall  we  pass  most  swiftly  from  point  to  point, 
and  be  present  always  at  the  focus  where 
the  greatest  number  of  vital  forces  unite  in 
their  purest  energy  ?  To  burn  always  with 
this  hard,  gem-like  flame,  to  maintain  this 
ecstasy,  is  success  in  life.  .  .  .  Not  to  discrimi- 
nate every  moment  some  passionate  attitude 
in  those  about  us,  and  in  the  very  brilliancy 
of  their  gifts  some  tragic  dividing  of  forces  on 
their  ways,  is,  on  this  short  day  of  frost  and 
sun,  to  sleep  before  evening.'' 

It  is  worth  noting  the  expression  *'  in- 
tellectual excitement.''  Physical  excitement, 
indeed,   is  something  which  we    can    scarcely 

31 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

associate  with  Pater  at  all.  He  lived  a 
hard,  strictly  intellectual  existefice.  He 
avoided  life  as  much  as  he  avoided  nature. 
He  never  undertook  the  highest  task  of  the 
artist :  the  re-creation,  the  re-interpretation 
of  nature  for  the  benefit  of  man.  He  could 
not,  so  to  speak,  see  large  ;  he  wanted  some- 
thing small  which  he  could  illuminate  for  an 
instant  with  his  *'  gem-like  flame.'*  His  Studies 
in  the  Renaissance,  for  example,  do  not  attempt 
to  deal  with  the  Renaissance  as  a  whole,  as 
a  phenomenon.  They  do  not  even  attempt 
to  give  complete  portraits  of  the  men  whose 
names  stand  as  headings  to  the  chapters. 
Pater's  glance  is  concentrated  on  some  one 
characteristic  of  the  personages  he  deals  with. 
The  eventful  life  of  Pico  della  Mirandola  is 
barely  alluded  to ;  for  in  this  essay  Pater 
emphasises,  as  usual,  some  particular  feature 
of  the  man  :  his  endeavour  to  reconcile 
Christianity  with  the  philosophy  of  ancient 
Greece.  A  similar  concentration  of  Pater's 
critical  faculties  on  one  particular  point  is 
seen  in  most  of  the  other  essays  :  those  on 
Botticelli  and  the  poetry  of  Michelangelo,  for 
example. 

In  the  essay  on  Leonardo,  however,  we  see 

32 


WALTER   PATER 


the  real  Pater.  There  was  indeed  something 
in  common  between  the  two  men.  They  ex- 
hibited similar  traits,  although  Pater's  might 
have  been  to  Leonardo's  *'  as  moonlight  unto 
sunlight  and  as  water  unto  wine.''  Leonardo's 
nature  was  haunted  by  ideals  of  beauty  ;  he 
was  absorbed  in  himself ;  he  held  aloof  even 
from  his  friends.  Pater  seizes  upon  these 
characteristics  and  delineates  them  with  in- 
finite skill.  Seldom  indeed  can  we  imagine 
him  taking  greater  care  of  his  phraseology  and 
making  the  utmost  endeavours  to  reach  the 
art  which  conceals  art.  From  the  first  to  the 
last  the  essay  is  his  masterpiece  ;  and  there 
is  a  celebrated  passage  in  it  which  almost  by 
itself  explains  Pater's  own  nature.  I  refer, 
of  course,  to  the  description  of  "La  Gioconda," 
which,  however  often  it  may  have  been  quoted 
before,  well  deserves  to  be  quoted  again  : 

**  La  Gioconda  "  is,  in  the  truest  sense,  Leonardo's 
masterpiece,  the  revealing  instance  of  his  mode  of 
thought  and  work.  In  suggest iveness,  only  the 
*'  Melancholia  "  of  Diirer  is  comparable  to  it ;  and 
no  crude  symbolism  disturbs  the  effect  of  its  subdued 
and  graceful  mystery.  We  all  know  the  face  and  hands 
of  the  figure,  set  in  its  marble  chair,  in  that  circle 
of  fantastic  rocks,  as  in  some  faint  light  under  sea. 
Perhaps  of  all  ancient  pictures  time  has  chilled  it 
least.    As  often  happens  with  works  in  which  invention 

3  33 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

seems  to  reach  its  limit,  there  is  an  element  in  it  given 
to,  not  invented  by,  the  master.  In  that  inestimable 
folio  of  drawings,  once  in  the  possession  of  Vasari, 
were  certain  designs  of  Verrocchio,  faces  of  such 
impressive  beauty  that  Leonardo  in  his  boyhood  copied 
them  many  times.  It  is  hard  not  to  connect  with 
these  designs  of  the  elder,  by-past  master,  as  with 
its  germinal  principle,  the  unfathomable  smile,  always 
with  a  touch  of  something  sinister  in  it,  which  plays 
over  all  Leonardo's  work.  Besides,  the  picture  is  a 
portrait.  From  childhood  we  see  the  image  defining 
itself  on  the  fabric  of  his  dreams  ;  and  but  for  express 
historical  testimony,  we  might  fancy  that  this  was 
but  his  ideal  lady,  embodied  and  beheld  at  last. 
What  was  the  relationship  of  a  living  Florentine  to 
this  creature  of  his  thought  ?  By  what  strange 
affinities  had  the  dream  and  the  person  grown  up 
thus  apart,  and  yet  so  close  together  ?  Present  from 
the  first  incorporeally  in  Leonardo's  brain,  dimly 
traced  in  the  designs  of  Verrocchio,  she  is  found  present 
at  last  in  II  Giocondo's  house.  That  there  is  much 
of  mere  portraiture  in  the  picture  is  attested  by  the 
legend  that  by  artificial  means,  the  presence  of  mimes 
and  flute-players,  that  subtle  expression  was  pro- 
tracted on  the  face.  Again,  was  it  in  four  years  and 
by  renewed  labour  never  really  completed,  or  in  four 
months  and  as  by  stroke  of  magic,  that  the  image 
was  projected  ? 

The  presence  that  thus  rose  so  strangely  beside  the 
waters,  is  expressive  of  what  in  the  ways  of  a  thousand 
years  men  had  come  to  desire.  Hers  is  the  head 
upon  which  all  **  the  ends  of  the  world  are  come," 
and  the  eyelids  are  a  little  weary.  It  is  a  beauty 
wrought  out  from  within  the  flesh,  the  deposit,  little 
cell  by  cell,  of  strange  thoughts  and  fantastic  reveries 
and  exquisite  passions.  Set  it  for  a  moment  beside 
one   of   those   white    Greek   goddesses    or   beautiful 

34 


WALTER   PATER 


women  of  antiquity,  and  how  would  they  be  troubled 
by  this  beauty,  into  which  the  soul  with  all  its  maladies 
has  passed  !  All  the  thoughts  and  experience  of  the 
world  have  etched  and  moulded  there,  in  that  which 
they  have  of  power  to  refine  and  make  expressive 
the  outward  form,  the  animalism  of  Greece,  the  lust 
of  Rome,  the  mysticism  of  the  Middle  Ages  with  its 
spiritual  ambition  and  imaginative  loves,  the  return 
of  the  Pagan  world,  the  sins  of  the  Borgias.  She  is 
older  than  the  rocks  among  which  she  sits  ;  like  the 
vampire,  she  has  been  dead  many  times,  and  learned 
the  secrets  of  the  grave  ;  and  has  been  a  diver  in 
deep  seas,  and  keeps  their  fallen  day  about  her  ;  and 
trafficked  for  strange  webs  with  Eastern  merchants  ; 
and,  as  Leda,  was  the  mother  of  Helen  of  Troy,  and, 
as  Saint  Anne,  the  mother  of  Mary  ;  and  all  this  has 
been  to  her  but  as  the  sound  of  lyres  and  flutes,  and 
lives  only  in  the  delicacy  with  which  it  has  moulded 
the  changing  lineaments,  and  tinged  the  eyelids  and 
the  hands.  The  fancy  of  a  perpetual  life,  sweeping 
together  ten  thousand  experiences,  is  an  old  one ; 
and  modern  philosophy  has  conceived  the  idea  of 
humanity  as  wrought  upon  by,  and  summing  up  in 
itself,  all  modes  of  thought  and  life.  Certainly  Lady 
Lisa  stands  as  the  embodiment  of  the  old  fancy, 
the  symbol  of  the  modern  idea. 

Here  we  have  the  truly  characteristic  Pater. 
When  brought  into  contact  with  life  and  nature 
he  is  overwhelmed  and  seeks  to  escape  ;  but 
when  criticising  a  human  production — a  picture, 
a  statue,  a  mediaeval  romance — ^he  is  in  his 
element.  The  vague  wistfulness  of  this  cele- 
brated picture  has  never  been  better  described — 

35 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

not  defined  ;  for  after  all  the  full  sensation  of 
beauty  cannot  be  explained  in  words :  but 
there  is  a  peculiar  charm,  a  fascination  about 
**  La  Gioconda/*  as  all  who  saw  the  picture  in  the 
Louvre  before  the  carelessness  of  its  custodians 
allowed  it  to  be  stolen  will  readily  testify. 
This  fascination  has  been  magnificently  ex- 
pressed for  us  by  Pater  ;  and  it  is  difficult  to 
think  of  any  English  writer,  either  before  him 
or  since,  who  could  have  done  it  so  well. 

It  may  be  true,  as  has  often  been  suggested, 
that  Leonardo  himself  would  have  been  among 
the  first  to  deny  that  he  ever  intended  to  represent 
in  the  picture  all  that  Pater  saw  in  it.  Pater 
himself  hints  (''  there  is  an  element  in  it  given 
to,  not  invented  by,  the  master  *')  that  we  need 
not  necessarily  discover  in  a  picture  exactly 
what  the  artist  himself  intended  to  place 
there.  As  we  shall  see  later,  Oscar  Wilde 
elaborated  this  thesis  in  one  of  his  most  brilliant 
essays,  with  special  reference  to  Pater  himself. 

We  see,  then,  what  Pater's  own  peculiar 
aim  is.  He  fastens  his  attention  on  one  par- 
ticular characteristic  of  a  thing  and  illuminates 
it  so  strongly  with  his  ''  gem-like  flame  "  that 
he  reinterprets  it,  gives  it  a  new  value,  exer- 
cising, in  short,  creative  criticism  and  proving 

36 


WALTER   PATER 


Wilde's  theory  that  criticism  is  a  more  difficult 
task  than  creation  itself.  While  this  trait  is 
seen  probably  to  the  greatest  extent  in  Pater's 
essay  on  Leonardo,  we  can  see  traces  of  it  in 
the  essay  on  Winckelmann.  This  great  student 
and  interpreter  of  Greek  antiquity  had  some 
things  in  common  with  Pater,  who  heads  his 
essay  on  him  with  the  natural  sentiment,  ''  et 
ego  in  Arcadia  fui."  Winckelmann,  however, 
was  a  man  of  much  broader  mind  than  Pater. 
His  mastery  of  Greek  art,  using  the  word  in 
its  widest  sense,  is  marvellous  to  us,  even  after 
a  century  of  noted  scholars,  and  of  this  Pater 
seems  to  have  been  well  aware.  He  mentions 
with  approval  Goethe's  reference  to  him  and 
he  even  quotes  Hegel  on  the  subject  :  '*  Winckel- 
mann, by  contemplation  of  the  ideal  works 
of  the  ancients,  received  a  sort  of  inspiration, 
through  which  he  opened  a  new  sense  of  the 
study  of  art.  He  is  to  be  regarded  as  one  of 
those  who,  in  the  sphere  of  art,  have  known 
how  to  initiate  a  new  organ  for  the  human 
spirit."  We  can  almost  discern  Pater  trembling 
with  excitement  between  the  words,  as  he  goes 
on  to  comment  upon  this  :  '*  that  it  has  given 
a  new  sense,  that  it  has  laid  open  a  new  organ, 
is  the  highest  that  can  be  said  of  any  critical 

37 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

effort.  It  is  interesting  then  to  ask  what  kind 
of  a  man  it  was  who  thus  laid  open  a  new  organ. 
Under  what  conditions  was  that  effected  ?  '* 

The  main  events  in  Winckelmann's  life  are, 
of  course,  known  to  all  cultured  Europe,  but 
the  more  prominent  of  them  seem  to  have 
additional  interest  when  retold  by  Pater.  In  a 
few  sentences  he  sums  up  the  man's  self-taught 
boyhood  and  youth,  his  intense  anxiety  to  escape 
from  the  ''crabbed  Protestantism **  of  Germany, 
the  bribe  by  means  of  which  he  succeeds  in 
reaching  Italy  as  a  member  of  the  Roman 
Church,  his  entry  into  Rome  with  volumes  of 
Voltaire  among  his  baggage.  This  religious 
sacrifice,  which  certainly  brought  Winckel- 
mann  into  ill-repute  at  the  time,  is  easily 
explained  away  by  his  English  admirer,  for  in 
doing  so  Pater  is  obviously  making  an  attempt 
to  explain  his  own  religious  position  : 

The  insincerity  of  his  religious  profession  was  only 
one  incident  of  a  culture  in  which  the  moral  instinct, 
like  the  religious  or  political,  was  merged  into  the 
artistic.  But  then  the  artistic  instinct  was  that,  by 
desperate  faithfulness  to  which  Winckelmann  was 
saved  from  a  mediocrity,  which,  breaking  through 
no  bounds,  moves  ever  in  a  bloodless  routine  and 
misses  its  one  chance  in  the  life  of  the  spirit  and  the 
intellect.  There  have  been  instances  of  culture 
developed  by  every  high  motive  in  turn,   and  yet 

38 


WALTER   PATER 


intense  at  every  point ;  and  the  aim  of  our  culture 
should  be  to  attain  not  only  as  intense  but  as  com- 
plete a  life  as  possible.  But  often  the  higher  life 
is  only  possible  at  all,  on  condition  of  the  selection 
of  that  in  which  one's  motive  is  native  and  strong  ; 
and  this  selection  involves  the  renunciation  of  a 
crown  reserved  for  others.  Which  is  better  ? — to 
lay  open  a  new  sense,  to  initiate  a  new  organ  for 
the  human  spirit,  or  to  cultivate  many  types  of 
perfection  up  to  a  point  which  leaves  us  still  beyond 
the  range  of  their  transforming  power  ?  Savonarola 
is  one  type  of  success ;  Winckelmann  is  another : 
criticism  can  reject  neither,  because  each  is  true  to 
itself.  Winckelmann  himself  explains  the  motive  of 
his  life  when  he  says  :  ''It  will  be  my  highest  reward, 
if  posterity  acknowledges  that  I  have  written 
worthily.'* 

Pater  himself  of  course  sought  to  open  up  a 
new  organ  ;  but  the  work  which  he  began  was 
not  carried  to  anything  like  a  conclusion  by 
himself.  He  laid  down  certain  canons  of 
aesthetic  criticism  and  emphasised  the  cultural 
value  of  beauty,  but  these  theories  might  have 
languished  within  the  precincts  of  Oxford — 
although,  indeed.  Pater  was  not  highly  appre- 
ciated even  there — had  not  Wilde  examined 
them,  meditated  upon  them  with  greater  pro- 
fundity than  is  usually  supposed,  and  developed 
them  to  an  extent  of  which  probably  their 
original  creator  had  never  dreamt. 

This  essay  of  Pater's  on  Winckelmann,  how- 

39 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

ever,  is  so  autobiographical  as  to  deserve 
further  notice.  Here  is  another  remark  about 
Winckelmann  which  Pater,  mutatis  mutandis, 
meant  I  think  to  be  applied  to  himself : 
'*  Winckelmann's  life  was  simple,  primeval, 
Greek.  His  delicate  constitution  permitted  him 
the  use  only  of  bread  and  wine.  Condemned 
by  many  as  a  renegade,  he  had  no  desire  for 
places  of  honour,  but  only  to  see  his  merits 
acknowledged  and  existence  assured  to  him. 
He  was  simple  without  being  niggardly  ;  he 
desired  to  be  neither  poor  nor  rich.*' 

Now  these  are  exactly  the  sentiments  which 
we  might  expect  a  man  in  Pater's  position  to 
hold.  They  were  expressed  before  his  time, 
in  spirit  if  not  in  letter,  by  the  poet  Gray,  and 
since  his  time  by  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson.  But  the 
great  distinction  remains  :  Winckelmann  com- 
bines scholarship  with  a  thorough  knowledge 
of  the  world  ;  and  even  Mr.  Benson,  despite  his 
scholarship  and  his  praise  of  the  life  of  a  Don, 
has  dealt  to  a  much  greater  degree  with  practical 
affairs — e.g.,  education — than  Pater  ever  at- 
tempted to  do.  When  estimating  the  value 
of  Pater's  work  and  influence,  these  are  factors 
which  ought  not  to  be  lost  sight  of.  When, 
for  example    we  find  Pater  quoting  with  ap- 

40 


WALTER   PATER 


proval  Goethe's  judgment  of  Winckelmann's 
works — ''  they  are  a  life,  a  living  thing,  de- 
signed for  those  who  are  alive'' — we  must 
recollect  that  this  is  about  the  last  thing  that 
could  be  said  of  Pater's  own  writings. 

It  is  possible  that  this  statement  may  be 
thought  strange  when  we  consider  to  what 
extent  Pater  declaimed  against  abstract  theories 
of  beauty.  For  example,  in  his  preface  to 
Studies  in  the  Renaissance  he  says  : 

Beauty,  like  all  other  qualities  presented  to  human 
experience,  is  relative  ;  and  a  definition  of  it  becomes 
unmeaning  and  useless  in  proportion  to  its  abstract- 
ness.  To  define  beauty,  not  in  the  most  abstract 
but  in  the  most  concrete  terms  possible,  to  find  not 
its  universal  formula  but  the  formula  which  expresses 
most  adequately  this  or  that  special  manifestation 
of  it,  is  the  aim  of  the  true  student  of  aesthetics.  .  .  . 
What  is  this  song  or  picture,  this  engaging  personality 
presented  in  life  or  in  book  to  me  ?  What  effect  does 
it  really  produce  on  me  ?  .  .  .  The  answers  to  these 
questions  are  the  original  facts  with  which  the  aesthetic 
critic  has  to  do  ;  and,  as  in  the  study  of  light,  of 
morals,  of  number,  one  must  realise  such  primary 
data  for  oneself  or  not  at  all,  and  he  who  experiences 
these  impressions  strongly  and  drives  directly  at  the 
discrimination  and  analysis  of  them,  has  no  need  to 
trouble  himself  with  the  abstract  question  what 
beauty  is  in  itself,  or  what  its  exact  relation  to  truth 
or  experience — metaphysical  questions,  as  unprofitable 
as  metaphysical  questions  elsewhere. 

This    apparent    contempt    for    metaphysics 

41 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

would  appear  to  be  emphasised  in  the  essay  on 
Winckelmann,  where  Pater  says  :  "  It  is  easy 
to  indulge  the  commonplace  metaphysical  in- 
stinct. But  it  is  possible  that  metaphysics 
may  be  one  of  those  things  which  we  must 
renounce,  if  we  mean  to  mould  our  lives  to 
artistic   perfection/' 

The  fact  nevertheless  remains  that  Pater 
himself  began  by  being  a  metaphysician.  He 
appears  to  have  absorbed  the  doctrines  of  the 
neo-Platonists  quite  unconsciously,  and  it  is 
significant  that  his  first  public  writing  was  a 
rather  fragmentary  essay  on  Coleridge  con- 
sidered as  a  philosopher.  This  essay  appeared 
in  the  Westminster  Review  in  1866,  although 
it  had  been  written  some  time  previously. 
Pater's  mind  was  greatly  influenced  also  by  the 
liberal  philosopher,  Thomas  Hill  Green,  who 
was  himself  very  much  under  the  influence 
of  Hegel. 

It  was,  in  fact,  Green  who  made  Pater  familiar 
with  Hegel's  theories  and  works  ;  and,  when 
Pater  paid  his  visits  to  Germany,  he  studied 
Hegel  more  and  more,  often  quoting  him  with 
approval  in  his  essays.  This  fact  is  not  only 
interesting  as  showing  the  influence  exercised 
upon  Pater  by  the  Hegelian  system  of  philo- 

42 


WALTER   PATER 


sophy,  but  also  as  indicating  the  primitive 
trend  of  Pater's  mind.  For  he  was  undoubtedly 
attracted  by  Hegel,  whereas  if  his  instincts  had 
been  really  sound  he  would  have  been  repelled 
by  him.  Metaphysics  had  always  a  peculiar 
fascination  for  Pater,  and  he  had  reached  his 
late  twenties  before  his  attention  was  more 
definitely  centred  upon  beauty  and  withdrawn 
from  metaphysical  speculation. 

It  was  about  this  period  of  his  life  that  Pater 
fell  in  with  Jahn's  Life  of  Winckelmann,  and  an 
intellectual  change  began  with  a  perusal  of 
this  book.  It  made  Pater  feel  dissatisfied  with 
Goethe  as  too  passionate  and  with  Ruskin  as 
too  idealistic  ;  he  thought,  as  Mr.  Benson  says, 
that  he  had  found  in  Winckelmann  some  one 
*'  who  could  devote  himself  to  the  passionate 
contemplation  of  beauty,  without  any  taint 
or  grossness  of  sense,  who  was  penetrated  by 
fiery  emotion,  but  without  any  dalliance  with 
feminine  sentiment,  whose  sensitiveness  was 
preternaturally  acute,  while  his  conception 
was  cool  and  firm."  In  thinking  thus,  however. 
Pater  misjudged  both  Goethe  and  Winckelmann. 
It  was  now  his  desire  to  find  some  common 
ground  where  art  and  metaphysics  might  meet. 
The  speculative  instinct  in  the  modern  mind, 

43 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

to  use  his  own  expression,  wanted  to  be  satisfied, 
but  it  could  not  be  satisfied  by  some  vague 
scholastic  abstraction.  Pater  thought  he  had 
discovered  this  common  ground  in  his  mistaken 
conception  of  Winckelmann's  contemplation 
of  beauty. 

It  never  occurred  to  Pater  that  '*  grossness  of 
sense  *'  might  be  a  necessary  element  in  the 
contemplation  of  beauty — that  the  expression, 
in  fact,  amounted  to  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
The  desire  to  stifle  the  physical  instincts  and 
to  contemplate  beauty  as  a  purely  intellectual 
emotion  arises  naturally  from  the  Christian 
school  of  thought — a  school  with  which  Pater 
at  this  time  of  his  life  believed  that  he  had 
nothing  to  do,  but  the  influence  of  which  clung 
to  him  through  his  admiration  of  Hegel  and 
his  deep  study  of  Plato.  It  is  indeed  of  some 
interest  to  note  that  Pater  at  one  time  thought 
of  becoming  a  Unitarian  minister,  and  that  later 
in  life  he  was  exceedingly  regular  in  his  attend- 
ance at  church.  When  he  acted  as  dean  of 
his  college,  Mr.  Benson  tells  us.  Pater  "  never 
failed  to  occupy  his  stall  both  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing and  evening  ;  and  he  was  a  strong  advocate 
for  Sunday  services  being  compulsory.  He  said 
with  truth  that  there  were  many  men  who  would 

44 


WALTER   PATER 


be  glad  to  have  the  habit  of  attending,  but  who 
had  failed  to  attend,  especially  on  Sunday 
morning,  partly  from  the  attraction  of  break- 
fast parties  or  possibly  from  pure  indolence, 
unless  there  was  a  rule  of  attendance.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  attendance  was  merely  a  matter 
of  individual  taste,  but  Pater  continued  to 
deplore  it.'' 

Another  anecdote  which  throws  a  great  deal 
of  light  on  Pater's  character  is  that  relating  to 
the  advice  he  gave  a  man  who  wished  to  read 
for  ''  Greats  "  :  ''I  cannot  advise  you  to  read 
any  special  books.  The  great  thing  is  to  read 
authors  whole  :  read  Plato  whole  ;  read  Kant 
whole ;  read  Mill  whole."  This  is  not  the 
only  indication  that  Pater  looked  with  much 
favour  upon  both  Kant  and  Mill :  but  they, 
together  with  Plato  and  Hegel,  are  philosophers 
who  could  not  possibly  be  enjoyed  by  any  one 
who  is  instinctively  attracted  by  Greek  an- 
tiquity. The  appearance  of  Socrates  marks 
the  beginning  of  the  artistic  decline  of  Greece. 
The  fact  that  Plato  thought  it  worth  while  to 
commit  his  Socratian  dialogues  to  writing  shows 
to  what  an  extent  the  degeneracy  was  beginning 
to  spread.  Few  men  have  known  Plato  better 
than  Coleridge  did,  and  Coleridge  has  summed 

45 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

up  Plato's  philosophy  in  a  single  sentence. 
His  philosophy  and  religion,  he  says,  were  but 
exotic  at  home  and  a  mere  opposition  to  the 
finite  in  all  things,  genuine  prophet  and  antici- 
pator as  he  was  of  the  Protestant  Christian  era. 
This  is  a  passage  in  Coleridge's  essay  on  Greek 
drama,  and  it  is  one  to  which  unfortunately 
neither  students  of  Plato  nor  students  of  Pater 
have  given  the  attention  it  deserved.  For  few 
things  could  be  more  opposed  to  the  culture 
of  the  Greeks  than  the  culture  of  this  Protestant 
Christian  era  to  which  Coleridge  refers  ;  and 
no  man  who  wrote  in  Greek  could  have  been 
less  Greek  in  soul  and  mind  than  Plato. 

We  see,  then,  how  Pater  began  to  be  muddled 
by  endeavouring  in  the  first  place  to  reconcile 
two  opposed  things,  viz.,  art  and  metaphysics. 
He  never  cleared  his  brain  sufficiently  to  be 
able  to  make  up  his  mind  between  one  and  the 
other.  And  unfortunately  he  could  not  and 
did  not  stop  here.  Comparatively  early  in 
his  career  he  had  written  an  essay  on  roman- 
ticism, which  at  the  mature  age  of  fifty  he  re- 
issued in  Appreciations.  He  undertakes  what 
he  admits  to  be  the  difficult  task  of  discovering 
the  formula  which  shall  distinguish  the  use  of 
the  words  classical  and  romantic.    His  definition 

46 


WALTER   PATER 


of  the  first  does  not  lead  us  much  further, 
although  he  recognises  that  the  romantic  spirit 
seeks  new  motives,  new  subjects  of  interest  and 
new  modifications  of  style — something  bizarre 
and  exaggerated. 

If  Pater  had  stopped  here  his  essay  might  have 
been  interesting  as  one  of  the  many  attempts 
to  distinguish  between  two  phases  of  literature 
which  are  difficult  to  define  ;  but  unfortunately 
he  was  not  content  to  do  this.  '*  In  truth," 
he  says,  *'  the  legitimate  contention  is,  not  of 
one  age  or  school  of  literary  art  against  another, 
but  of  all  successive  schools  alike,  against  the 
stupidity  which  is  dead  to  the  substance  and 
the  vulgarity  which  is  dead  to  form.*'  He  then 
proceeds  to  say  that  our  literary  work  should 
combine  the  qualities  of  romanticism  and 
classicism  :  that  in  short  it  should  be  new  in 
substance  and  old  in  form.  The  fallacy  under- 
lying this  suggestion  is  obvious.  If  we  acted 
upon  the  recommendation  thus  set  forth,  we 
should  be  at  liberty  to  perpetrate  the  incon- 
gruity of  choosing  a  romantic  subject  and 
endeavouring  to  cast  it  in  a  classical  form — a 
mistake  which  has  been  made  more  than  once 
by  Swinburne,  Browning,  and  Tennyson.  By 
endeavouring  first  of  all  to  reconcile  art  with 

47 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

metaphysics  ;  secondly,  like  Pico  della  Miran- 
dola,  to  reconcile  Greek  philosophy  with  Chris- 
tianity;  and  thirdly,  to  reconcile  classicism  with 
romanticism.  Pater  shows  that  he  never  had  a 
really  clear  conception  of  what  his  canons  of 
aesthetic  criticism  should  be.  He  saw  that 
the  French  romanticism  of  the  nineteenth 
century  originated  in  Rousseau,  but  the  range 
of  his  intellectual  vision  was  too  circumscribed 
to  enable  him  to  perceive  that  Rousseau,  Kant, 
Plato,  Hegel,  and  Christianity  all  set  out  from 
similar  philosophical  bases  and  that  they  them- 
selves and  the  schools  of  thought  which  they 
typified  were  antithetical  to  that  very  philo- 
sophy of  ancient  Greece  which  Pater  thought 
he  understood  so  well. 

Nor  does  Pater  seem  to  have  sufficiently  dis- 
tinguished between  the  romanticism  of  France 
and  the  romanticism  of  Germany.  German 
romanticism,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out, 
originated  with  a  few  ill-cultured  writers  who 
buried  themselves  in  romances  of  the  Middle 
Ages  ;  but  the  French  romanticists  had  come 
through  too  long  a  period  of  Latin  and  Greek 
studies  to  be  influenced  by  such  callow  or 
rather  degenerate  models.  The  fact  was  that 
in  France  classicism  had  nearly  developed  into 

48 


WALTER   PATER 


pedantry — not  because  of  any  inherent  fault  in 
classicism,  but  simply  because  its  representa- 
tives were  unworthy  of  it.  French  writers 
who,  like  Stendhal,  called  themselves  romantic- 
ists, did  so  because  the  term  in  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century  had  become  a  con- 
venient one  for  describing  writers  who  aimed 
at  doing  something  new  :  they  did  not  call 
themselves  romanticists  in  the  original  meaning 
of  the  word  as  applied  in  Germany,  because 
they  never  looked  for  their  models  among 
those  mediaeval  romances  which  were  so  much 
in  favour  in  contemporary  Germany. 

In  order  to  understand  all  this,  indeed.  Pater 
would  have  had  to  study  the  subject  as  a  whole, 
and  his  nature  shrank  from  such  an  effort.  He 
saw  a  certain  part  of  the  classico-romantic  con- 
troversy, and  upon  this  particular  part  he 
concentrated  his  attention.  Having  studied 
it  and  written  about  it  he  went  back  to  his 
Greeks  and  Romans. 

The  results  of  Pater's  further  classical  studies 
are  seen  in  his  novel  Marius  the  Epicurean.  If 
we  take  the  essay  on  Leonardo  as  the  most 
typical  example  of  Pater's  criticism,  assuredly 
Marius  the  Epicurean  is  the  best  example  of 
his  purely  constructive  work.    The  novel  is  not 

4  49 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

a  very  long  one,  and  the  attempt  is  ambitious  ; 
but  the  reader  is  bound  to  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  Pater  as  an  essayist  and  critic  was 
much  superior  to  Pater  in  any  other  form. 

Any  one  might  safely  have  wagered  that  if 
Pater  had  wished  to  write  about  any  period  of 
antiquity  he  would  have  chosen  the  period 
which  we  find  in  this  novel.  The  scene  is  laid 
in  the  second  century  of  the  Christian  era, 
i.e.  a  time  when  the  truly  classical  culture  of 
Greece  and  Rome  had  practically  disappeared,  its 
place  being  taken  by  the  inconclusive  critics  and 
dialectical  neo-Platonists  at  Alexandria.  In 
Rome  itself  all  faith  in  religious  principles  had 
died  out  among  the  upper  classes,  to  which 
Pater's  hero,  Marius,  belonged.  The  higher 
classes  in  Roman  society  satisfied  their  spiritual 
cravings  by  means  of  numerous  philosophies 
which  they  took  in  a  more  or  less  altered  form 
from  Greece,  Egypt,  and  even  far-off  India. 
In  Rome,  therefore,  as  in  Alexandria,  there  was 
a  considerable  amount  of  inconclusive  philo- 
sophical discussion.  But  in  an  age  when  faith 
of  any  kind  is  lacking  we  very  seldom  indeed 
find  a  great  poet  or  a  great  constructive  philo- 
sopher, and  such  an  age  would  naturally  attract 
men  who  are  by  nature  more  inclined  to  dia- 

50 


WALTER   PATER 


lectics  and  analysis  than  to  the  exposition  of 
any  synthetic  philosophical  system. 

Pater,  it  must  be  said  at  once,  was  not  a  man 
of  a  truly  creative  mind  ;  and  in  consequence 
this  decadent  period  of  the  Roman  Empire 
appealed  to  him  immensely.  He  weaves  his 
story  round  Marius,  who  is  not  only  a  Roman 
of  the  highest  class  but  the  friend  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  himself.  Marius  cannot  escape  the 
prevailing  fashion  of  indulging  in  philosophical 
speculation.  He  takes  up  and  discards  various 
systems,  and  finally,  after  having  become  a 
theist,  he  is  attracted  by  Christianity.  It 
should  be  observed,  however,  that  it  is  not  the 
dogmatic  or  philosophical  side  of  Christianity 
that  appeals  to  him,  but  its  aesthetic  side. 
Pater  himself,  it  may  be  remembered,  was  like- 
wise attracted  more  by  the  aesthetic  side  of 
Christianity  than  by  its  dogma  or  its  philo- 
sophy. Nor  is  this  the  only  instance  where  the 
novel  may  be  said  to  be  autobiographical. 
Although  Marius  has  several  friends — and  in 
particular  one  very  intimate  friend  Flavian — 
who  took  full  advantage  of  that  freedom  in 
sexual  indulgence  which  was  more  than  tolerated 
at  the  time,  Marius  himself,  owing  to  his  cold 
and  fastidious  temperament,  holds  aloof  from 

51 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

women.  Exactly  the  same  remark  applies 
to  Pater  himself. 

It  is  difficult  even  now  in  England  to  discuss 
sexual  problems,  from  a  purely  scientific  stand- 
point, with  the  freedom  and  appreciation  to  be 
found  in  more  cultured  countries.  Sexuality 
as  contemplated  by  the  scientist  is  very  different 
from  the  sexuality  ''  of  the  sty  *'  contemplated 
by  the  modern  English  novelist.  From  a 
psychological  point  of  view  the  scientific  analysis 
of  a  man's  sexuality  will  throw  more  light  upon 
his  character  than  anything  else.  We  have 
only  to  think  of  Goethe  to  realise  its  importance. 
It  would  be  possible  to  say  a  great  deal  more 
about  Pater  from  a  critical  standpoint  if  we  had 
more  particulars  about  his  sexual  feelings,  but 
such  particulars  are  unfortunately  lacking  in  all 
the  biographies  of  the  man  hitherto  published. 
We  can  reconstruct  this  side  of  his  nature  from 
his  works,  but  not  to  a  very  great  extent.  1  I 
have,  however,  ascertained  from  two  or  three 
persons  who  knew  Pater  fairly  intimately  that 
he  was  in  the  habit  of  collecting  volumes  in 
that  particular  class  of  French  novels  which, 
were  they  published  in  England,  would  at  once 
be  seized  by  a  scandalised  police.  Why  this 
remarkable  fact  has   hitherto   been  concealed 

52 


WALTER   PATER 


is  difficult  for  the  Continental  critic  to  under- 
stand, for  it  certainly  throws  a  very  helpful 
light  upon  Pater's  character.  He  was  never 
suspected  of  any  unnatural  vices,  but  I  think 
we  are  justified  in  taking  the  title  of  a  play  by 
Terence  and  calling  Pater  a  heauton  timoroum- 
enos.  From  a  medical  point  of  view  this  theory 
is  fully  upheld  by  Pater's  sudden  death  at  a 
comparatively  early  age — when  he  died  in 
July  1894,  he  was  not  quite  fifty-five  years  old. 
It  is  true  that  he  had  not  been  in  very  good 
health  for  some  time  previously,  but  he  was  at 
all  events  able  to  go  about  and  pursue  his 
studies  as  usual,  and  his  death  occurred  sud- 
denly one  morning  as  he  was  coming  downstairs. 
To  return  to  Marius,  however,  we  find 
him  passing  through  practically  the  same  in- 
tellectual stages  and  struggles  as  the  French 
decadents  of  the  nineteenth  century,  such  as 
Huysmans.  Marius  is  a  philosopher,  but  his 
mind  has  been  influenced  by  so  many  philo- 
sophies that  his  intellectual  foundations  have 
become  undermined.  As  in  the  case  of  a  man 
like  Huysmans,  there  is  sufficient  of  the  artist 
in  him  to  make  him  wish  for  something  aesthetic, 
something  which  he  cannot  find  in  the  barren 
dialectics  of  the  neo-Platonists.     Like  many  a 

53 


/ 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

later  decadent,  therefore,  he  is  attracted  by 
the  aesthetic  side  of  the  Roman  CathoUc  faith 
and   becomes   a   Christian. 

As  an  autobiographical  study,  throwing  con- 
siderable light  upon  the  character  of  the  author, 
Marius  the  Epicurean  is  of  interest  to  any  one 
who  wishes  to  study  Pater  thoroughly  ;  but, 
considered  merely  from  the  point  of  view  of  a 
literary  effort,  the  book  is  disappointing.  It 
is  not  a  good  psychological  novel ;  for  in 
psychology  as  in  other  matters  Pater's  atten- 
tion was  concentrated  upon  some  one  point  to 
the  exclusion  of  everything  else.  He  reveals  to 
us,  although  half -unconsciously,  many  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  decadents  of  the  period  ; 
but  he  cannot  convey  to  us  any  conception 
of  the  real  nature  of  the  people  who  were 
not  decadents.  A  character  like  Cornelius,  for 
example,  corresponds  to  no  reality  whatever. 
On  the  other  hand,  Pater  is  usually  accurate  in 
what  we  might  call  the  local  colour  ;  but  he 
certainly  meant  to  write  more  than  a  mere 
archaeological  novel.  Even  his  technique  is 
open  to  serious  criticism.  Our  attention  is 
suddenly  taken  off  the  story  while  we  have  to 
peruse  long  accounts  of  episodes  directly  trans- 
lated or  adapted  from  Latin  or  Greek  authors, 

54 


WALTER   PATER 


such,  for  example,  as  the  story  of  Cupid  and 
Psyche  from  Apuleius,  or  various  discourses 
"  lifted ''  from  Marcus  Aurelius.  The  book, 
too,  seems  to  come  to  a  rather  unexpected 
ending.  Marius  is  martyred  before  his  thoughts 
have  had  time  to  mature,  before  he  has  been 
able  to  recognise  that  the  essential  elements 
of  Christianity  do  not  lie  in  its  aesthetics. 
There  are,  however,  little  patches  of  the  better 
Pater  here  and  there.  Take  the  description  of 
the  old  Roman  villa  where  Marius  is  brought  up  : 

The  little  glazed  windows  in  the  uppermost  chamber 
framed  each  its  dainty  landscape — the  pallid  crags  of 
Carrara,  like  wildly-twisted  snow-drifts  above  the 
purple  heath  ;  the  distant  harbour,  with  its  freight 
of  white  marble  going  to  sea  ;  the  lighthouse  temple 
of  Venus  Speciosa  on  its  dark  headland  amid  the 
long-drawn  curves  of  white  breakers.  .  .  .  The  air 
there  had  always  a  motion  in  it,  and  drove  the  scent 
of  the  new-mown  hay  along  all  the  passages  of  the 
house. 

We  recognise  Pater  again  when  we  read 
about  Marius's  literary  training  and  his  discern- 
ment of  the  fact  that  independence  is  necessary 
in  taste  ; 

It  was  a  principle,  the  forcible  apprehension  of 
which  made  him  jealous  and  fastidious  in  the  selection 
of  his  intellectual  food ;  often  listless  while  others 
read  or  gazed  diligently ;    never  pretending  to   be 

55 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

moved  out  of  mere  complaisance  to  other  people's 
emotions  :  it  served  to  foster  in  him  a  very  scrupulous 
literary  sincerity  with  himself.  And  it  was  this 
uncompromising  demand  for  a  matter,  in  all  art, 
derived  immediately  from  lively  personal  intuition, 
this  constant  appeal  to  individual  judgment,  which 
saved  his  euphuism,  even  at  its  weakest,  from  lapsing 
into  mere  artifice. 

This  is  intended  to  be  a  description  of  one 
phase  of  the  development  of  the  mind  of  Marius  ; 
in  reality  it  is  Pater  writing  about  the  ideal 
Pater.  For  Pater's  own  writing  is  nothing  in 
the  end  but  another  form  of  euphuism.  He 
can  express  subtle  shades  of  thought  with 
great  delicacy,  and  his  phrasing  is  often  dignified 
and  brilliant,  as  for  example  in  his  criticism 
of  **La  Gioconda'*;  but  his  style,  taken  as  a 
whole,  is  much  too  complex  and  elaborate. 
When  we  read  him  we  are  walking  with  leaden 
shoes.  We  can  almost  feel  him  pausing  in  the 
middle  of  a  sentence  and  looking  for  a  word, 
and  sometimes  the  result  hardly  justifies  the 
strenuous  efforts  which  have  been  made  in  the 
endeavour  to  bring  the  expression  to  per- 
fection. This  tediousness  perhaps  is  most  ap- 
parent in  the  Imaginary  Portraits.  A  fantastic 
sketch  is  built  round  some  biographical  hint, 
but  Pater's  lack  of  dramatic  power  makes  the 

56 


WALTER   PATER 


characters  he  evolves  appear  utterly  dreary. 
Now  and  again,  of  course,  particularly  in  the 
description  of  Watteau,  we  come  across  a  sen- 
tence or  two  showing  him  at  his  best. 

The  rather  technical  lectures  published  under 
the  title  of  Plato  and  Platonism,  and  the  various 
collected  essays  in  the  volume  of  Greek  Studies, 
call  for  no  particular  attention  here.  Pater 
re-writes  two  or  three  scenes  from  Greek 
mythology  with  his  customary  charm,  but  also 
at  times  with  his  customary  laboriousness  ; 
and  modern  Continental  critics  are  certainly 
not  with  him  in  ranking  Greek  sculpture  as 
high  as  he  does.  There  were  a  few  respects  in 
which  Pater  had  outgrown  Hegel,  but  there 
are  very  many  in  which  modern  criticism  and 
research  have  outgrown  Pater.  Although  Pater 
was  in  general  rather  too  favourably  disposed 
towards  his  great  predecessor,  his  lecture  on  the 
Genius  of  Plato  is  certainly  a  very  stimulating 
production. 

Despite  his  obvious  defects,  however,  Pater 
exercised  considerable  influence  over  his  con- 
temporaries. We  may  almost  say  of  him  that 
he  discovered  beauty,  although  he  did  not  know 
what  to  do  with  it.  To  that  extent,  at  all  events, 
he  raised  himself  above  the  materialism  of  his 

57 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

time,  and  this  may  stand  to  his  credit.  If  he 
had  only  been  more  articulate,  he  might  almost 
have  anticipated  Wilde.  But  his  style,  despite 
all  the  care  he  took  with  it,  is  often  exasperating. 
It  is  obvious  that  he  was  considerably  in- 
fluenced by  Ruskin ;  but,  whereas  Ruskin 
wrote  all  too  fluently,  Pater  stuttered. 


58 


CHAPTER    III 

OSCAR   WILDE 

A  WHOLE  generation  of  theatre-goers  have 
laughed  over  many  of  Gilbert's  plays,  but  one 
of  them,  not  very  often  performed  now,  was 
exceedingly  popular  in  its  day,  viz.,  '*  Patience.'' 
It  was  intended  to  satirise,  and  with  many 
and  obvious  exaggerations  did  satirise,  a 
movement  which  at  the  time  was  very  wide- 
spread in  certain  literary  and  pseudo-literary 
circles.  The  complaints  of  the  dragoons,  the 
heartfelt  sighing  of  the  "  rapturous  maidens," 
the  puzzled  thoughts  of  Patience  herself,  the 
hypocrisy  of  Bunthorne  and  the  powerful 
attractions  of  Archibald  Grosvenor,  may  seem 
very  remote  from  us  when  we  read  over  the 
play  at  an  interval  of  thirty  years  after  its 
first  production.  And  yet  all  the  satire  in  the 
play,  including  at  least  one  of  Gilbert's  best 
songs,  was  directed  at  a  movement  which  had 
been  initiated  by  a  clever  young  man  in  his 
early  twenties,  and  which  continued  until  the 
close  of  the  century. 

59 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Oscar  Fingal  OTlaherty  Wills  Wilde  was  born 
in  Dublin  in  October  1854,  and  went  up  to 
Oxford  in  time  to  hear  both  Ruskin  and  Pater 
lecture.  While  at  Oxford  he  discarded  his  string 
of  middle  names,  and  preferred  to  be  known 
simply  by  the  first.  Neither  Pater  nor  Ruskin, 
however,  exercised  what  might  strictly  be  called 
any  real  influence  on  Wilde's  thoughts  or  char- 
acter. Ruskin's  words  and  Pater's  writings 
directed  his  attention  to  certain  aesthetic  schools 
of  painting ;  and  Pater  no  doubt  led  the  young 
undergraduate  to  examine  more  than  he  might 
otherwise  have  done  into  the  nature  of  beauty. 
Thenceforth  Wilde  took  up  the  aesthetic  move- 
ment on  his  own  account  and  it  was  ever  after- 
wards stamped  by  his  personality.  He  had 
a  fine  set  of  rooms  at  Magdalen  College,  rooms 
which  little  by  little  became  ornamented  with 
valuable  old  engravings  and  artistic  curiosities 
of  various  kinds,  more  particularly  some  blue 
china,  judged  by  experts  to  be  very  old  and 
valuable — the  very  set  which  drew  from  him 
on  one  occasion  the  famous  remark,  "  Would 
that  I  could  live  up  to  my  blue  china  !  "  He 
had  not  while  at  Oxford  begun  to  adopt  those 
eccentric  styles  of  dress  which  afterwards  added 
to  his  notoriety ;  but,  what  is  more  to  the  point, 

60 


OSCAR  WILDE 


he  appears  to  have  developed  those  classical 
studies  which  he  began  early  in  life  and  con- 
tinued at  Trinity  College,  Dublin. 

It  was  doubtless  the  numerous  dinner  and 
supper  parties  given  in  his  rooms  that  led  Oscar 
Wilde  to  develop  his  conversational  fluency  and 
gift  of  repartee.  He  had  already  begun  to 
assume  his  charming  poses,  and  he  deceived 
all  his  friends  with  respect  to  his  artistic  merits 
by  intimating  quite  calmly  that  if  he  were  cast 
on  his  own  resources  for  a  living  he  would  take 
to  painting  pictures.  But  his  affectation — 
''  the  dangerous  and  delightful  distinction  of 
being  different  from  others,"  as  he  put  it — by 
no  means  endeared  him  to  his  fellow-under- 
graduates. His  rooms  were  raided  more  than 
once,  and  he  himself  was  personally  subjected  to 
some  very  unaesthetic  treatment. 

In  1877  Wilde  was  fortunate  enough  to  be 
able  to  visit  Greece  with  a  party  which  included 
John  Pentland  Mahaffy.  One  effect  of  this 
journey  was  to  add  considerably  to  his  already 
profound  knowledge  of  the  spirit  of  Greek 
antiquity,  and  a  second  was  to  make  him  more 
favourably  disposed  than  he  had  been  to  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  Although  in  the  next 
year  Wilde  won  the  Newdigate  Prize  by  his 

61 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

poem  on  Ravenna,  and  contributed  several 
articles  to  various  periodicals,  his  literary 
career  really  began  with  the  publication  of 
his  volume  of  poems  in  1881.  His  name  had 
already  become  known  in  connection  with  the 
aesthetic  movement,  and,  in  addition  to  Gilbert's 
play  already  referred  to,  he  was  the  subject  of 
a  few  cartoons  in  Punchy  which  may  be  described 
as  good-naturedly  spiteful.  His  poems,  how- 
ever, were  not  approved  of  by  the  majority  of 
the  critics,  and  at  least  one  of  them  complained 
that,  although  Mr.  Wilde's  name  had  for  some 
time  been  associated  with  a  certain  definite 
movement,  his  poems  did  not  seem  to  convey 
any  particular  message  concerning  it.  This 
complaint  was  to  some  extent  justified,  nor 
did  Wilde  in  his  public  writings  do  anything 
towards  removing  it  for  ten  years.  In  the 
eighties  he  secured  a  certain  amount  of  fame 
by  the  publication  of  various  stories  and  essays  ; 
but  his  first  real  contribution  towards  elucidating 
for  the  Philistine  mind  the  mysteries  of  the 
sesthetic  cult  was  his  Intentions,  published  in 
1891 .  It  is  true  that  some  of  the  essays  included 
in  the  volume  had  already  been  published  in 
magazines  a  year  or  two  before,  but  when 
they  were  collected  into  a  bound  book  they  met 
62 


OSCAR  WILDE 


with  much  more  attention  and  abuse.  In 
The  Decay  of  Lying  and  in  The  Critic  as  Artist 
the  aesthetic  philosophy  and  the  aesthetic 
literary  canons  may  be  said  to  have  been  laid 
down  once  and  for  all. 

To  understand  why  it  should  have  been  neces- 
sary to  lay  down  any  such  canons  of  taste  and 
criticism,  we  must  glance  at  the  state  of  English 
literature  when  Wilde  came  upon  the  scene  and 
for  a  few  years  previously.  The  event  which 
Mr.  Theodore  Watts-Dunton  describes  as  "  the 
renascence  of  wonder  in  poetry  "  was  long  past ; 
but  Keats,  Shelley,  Coleridge,  and  Byron  had 
left  no  successors  to  carry  on  the  movement  thus 
initiated.  English  literature  in  general  showed 
a  distinct  tendency  to  fall  below  the  classical 
level  and  to  follow  the  old  forms  of  classicism 
without  following  its  spirit.  Swinburne,  as 
Mr.  Waugh  long  ago  pointed  out,  has  left  us 
nothing  but  melody,  and  men  like  Leslie 
Stephen,  Tennyson,  Browning,  Lewis  Morris, 
Henley,  Thomas  Hardy,  Birrell,  and  William 
Watson — I  merely  cite  a  few  representative 
names — did  not  seek  to  rejuvenate  classicism 
in  a  classic  form  and  hardly  prevented  it, 
indeed,  from  degenerating  into  dull  pedantry. 
The  spirit  of  the  age,  too,  was  dominated  by  a 

63 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Liberal  mode  of  thinking,  with  its  inevitable 
accompaniments  of  materialism  and  philis- 
tinism. 

It  is  a  well-known  psychological  fact  that  a 
materialistic  age  unconsciously  seeks  some  ideal- 
istic philosophy.  Tradesmen,  money-changers, 
and  speculators  soothe  such  conscience  as 
they  have  by  romantic  poetry  and  impres- 
sionism in  painting.  If,  therefore,  one  side 
of  British  materialism  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury is  represented  in  the  works  of  men  like 
Browning,  Meredith,  or  Morley,  we  find  the 
other  extreme  represented  by  those  writers 
of  a  romantic  tendency  who  were  naturally 
called  into  being  by  the  spirit  of  a  materialistic 
age.  The  most  eminent  among  these  writers 
were  men  like  Oscar  Wilde  himself,  Arthur 
Symons,  Max  Beerbohm,  Ernest  Dowson, 
Hubert  Crackanthorpe,  George  Bernard  Shaw, 
John  Davidson,  and  Gissing,  together  with 
many  who  cannot  be  ranked  quite  so  high, 
such  as  Richard  le  Gallienne,  St.  John  Hankin, 
Fiona  McLeod,  George  Moore,  and  Francis 
Thompson. 

From  about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  then,  the  progress  of  English  literature 
may   be   approximately   represented   by   three 

64 


OSCAR  WILDE 


lines  starting  from  a  common  base.  The  middle 
line  may  be  taken  to  represent  a  truly  classical 
literature :  but  from  this  line  two  others 
branch  off,  one  to  the  right  and  one  to  the  left, 
and  the  more  they  are  extended  in  their  different 
directions  the  more  do  they  become  separated 
from  the  line  representing  classicism  and  from 
one  another.  On  the  one  line  we  find  the 
writers  who  initiated  no  new  classical  literature 
movement,  and  who  merely  followed  the  letter 
of  the  traditions  which  had  come  down  to  them 
without  endeavouring  to  follow  .their  spirit ; 
and  along  the  other  line  we  find  those  idealistic 
poets  and  prose-writers  who  are  generally  associ- 
ated with  the  aesthetic  movement.  The  middle 
line  of  classicism  is  represented  up  to  the 
eighties  by  only  one  man  whose  mind  was  * 
steeped  in  classical  culture  and  who  had  a 
thorough  insight  into  the  relationship  in  which 
antiquity  stood  to  modern  times.  This  man  ' 
was  Matthew  Arnold  ;  and  his  critical  essays 
will  compare  favourably  with  anything  in 
Continental  literature.  It  is  surely  obvious 
that  when  Arnold  criticised  Continental  writers 
like  Joubert  or  Heine,  and  when  he  wrote  on 
the  literary  influence  of  academies,  he  had  in 
mind  at  the  same  time  the  romantic  period  in 
5  65 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

English  literature  which  he  foresaw  but  did 
not  live  to  see.  It  may,  I  think,  be  assumed  that 
if  Arnold  had  lived  for  a  few  years  longer  he 
would  have  preferred  decadent  classicists  of 
the  Henley  school  to  romanticists  of  the  Wilde 
school ;  and  I  say  this  because  the  Henley 
school,  at  all  events,  displayed  one  classical 
trait,  which  was  almost  entirely  lacking  in  the 
romantic  school  of  the  time,  viz.,  that  peculiar 
literary  and  philosophic  stability  which  it  is 
difficult  to  define.  It  is  the  writers  of  the 
romantic  school  who  are  dealt  with  in  this 
volume,  not  because  their  works  are  likely  to 
last  for  all  time,  or  because  they  are  to  be  taken 
as  models  for  present-day  writers  ;  but  because 
these  romanticists  did  at  all  events  endeavour 
to  initiate  a  new  literary  movement  by  com- 
bining the  best  features  of  classicism  and 
romanticism.  They  had  Pater's  authority  for 
thinking  that  this  was  possible,  but  unfortu- 
nately this  authority  misled  them. 

Oscar  Wilde  not  only  brought  the  new  move- 
ment prominently  to  the  notice  of  the  public,  but 
he  also  took  a  very  great  natural  delight  in 
shocking  the  middle-class  intellects  of  his  time 
by  his  own  exaggerated  posing  and  affecta- 
tions.   When  Gilbert  in  the  play  already  men- 

66 


OSCAR  WILDE 


tioned  sneered  at  Japanese  art,  lilies,  and 
poppies,  he  was  merely  expressing  in  those  well- 
known  humorous  verses  of  his  exactly  what  the 
sober  public  of  the  time  thought  of  Wilde  and 
all  his  works.  Much  of  the  hatred  aroused 
against  Wilde  was  due,  of  course,  to  the  fact 
that  his  shafts  struck  home.  His  strange 
costumes,  his  languid  manner,  and  all  the  airs 
and  graces  which  he  was  wont  to  assume  at 
various  times  merely  served,  as  he  intended, 
to  conceal  a  thorough  scholar  and  man  of  the 
world.  His  remorseless  epigrams  laid  bare 
the  soul  of  the  average  member  of  society  ; 
and  he  was  not  forgiven  for  carrying  out  this 
thankless  task.  The  English  public,  as  he  said 
himself,  always  feels  perfectly  at  its  ease  when 
a  mediocrity  is  talking  to  it ;  it  forgives  every- 
thing except  genius.  He  doubtless  knew  in- 
stinctively that  it  takes  a  man  with  more  than 
a  mere  touch  of  genius  to  evolve  paradoxes  as  he 
evolved  them. 

Oscar  Wilde  has  himself  summed  up  his 
artistic  theories  at  the  end  of  the  essay  on 
The  Decay  of  Lying  and  in  the  preface  to  Dorian 
Gray.  In  the  former  he  says,  referring  to  the 
doctrines  of  the  aesthetic  school : 

Art  never  expresses  anything  but  itself.    It  has  an 

67 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

independent  life,  just  as  thought  has,  and  develops 
purely  on  its  own  lines.  It  is  not  necessarily  realistic 
in  an  age  of  realism,  nor  spiritual  in  an  age  of  faith. 
So  far  from  being  the  creation  of  its  time,  it  is  usually 
in  direct  opposition  to  it,  and  the  only  history  it 
preserves  for  us  is  the  history  of  its  own  progress. 
...  In  no  case  does  it  reproduce  its  age.  To  pass 
from  the  art  of  a  time  to  the  time  itself  is  the  great 
mistake  that  all  historians  commit. 

The  second  doctrine  is  this.  All  bad  art  comes 
from  returning  to  Life  and  Nature,  and  elevating  them 
into  ideals.  Life  and  Nature  may  sometimes  be 
used  as  part  of  art's  rough  material,  but,  before  they 
are  of  any  real  service  to  art  they  must  be  translated 
into  artistic  conventions.  The  moment  art  sur- 
renders its  imaginative  medium,  it  surrenders  every- 
thing. .  .  . 

The  third  doctrine  is  that  Life  imitates  Art  far  more 
than  Art  imitates  Life.  This  results  not  merely  from 
Life's  imitative  instinct,  but  from  the  fact  that  the 
self-conscious  aim  of  Life  is  to  find  expression  and 
that  Art  offers  it  certain  beautiful  forms  to  realise  that 
energy.  It  is  a  theory  that  has  never  been  put  for- 
ward before,  but  it  is  extremely  fruitful  and  throws 
an  entirely  new  light  upon  the  history  of  Art. 

It  follows  as  a  corollary  from  this  that  external 
Nature  also  imitates  Art.  The  only  effects  that  she 
can  show  us  are  the  effects  that  we  have  already 
seen  through  poetry  or  in  paintings.  This  is  the  secret 
of  Nature's  charm,  as  well  as  an  explanation  of  Nature's 
weakness. 

The  final  revelation  is  that  Lying,  the  telling  of 
beautiful  untrue  things,  is  the  proper  aim  of  Art. 

Consider  again  a  few  of  the  principles  laid 
down  in  the  preface  to  Dorian  Gray  : 
68 


OSCAR  WILDE 


The  artist  is  the  creator  of  beautiful  things. 

The  critic  is  he  who  can  translate  into  another 
manner  or  a  new  material  his  impression  of  beautiful 
things. 

Those  who  find  ugly  meanings  in  beautiful  things 
are  corrupt  without  being  charming.     This  is  a  fault. 

Those  who  find  beautiful  meanings  in  beautiful 
things  are  the  cultivated.     For  these  there  is  hope. 

They  are  the  elect  to  whom  beautiful  things  mean 
only  Beauty. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  moral  or  an  immoral 
book.  Books  are  well  written,  or  badly  written. 
That  is  all. 

No  artist  desires  to  prove  anything.  Even  things 
that  are  true  can  be  proved. 

No  artist  has  ethical  sympathies.  An  ethical  sym- 
pathy in  an  artist  is  an  unpardonable  mannerism  of 
style. 

Vice  and  virtue  are  to  the  artist  materials  for  an  art. 

It  is  the  spectator,  and  not  life,  that  art  really  mirrors. 

We  can  forgive  a  man  for  making  a  useful  thing  as 
long  as  he  does  not  admire  it.  The  only  excuse  for 
making  a  useless  thing  is  that  one  admires  it  intensely. 

All  art  is  quite  useless. 

It  is  hardly  possible  for  us  at  the  present  day 
to  realise  the  effect  of  utterances  like  these  in 
the  early  nineties.  Here  was  something  new, 
bold,  original.  There  was  only  one  fallacy 
underlying  the  whole  movement  :  but  that  one 
fallacy  forms  the  entire  distinction  between 
romanticism  and  classicism.  The  motto  of  the 
romantic  school,  as  may  be  guessed  from  the 
principles    just    quoted,    was    the    well-known 

69 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

catchword,  Art  for  Art's  sake.  The  principle 
of  the  classic  school  from  Nietzsche  back  to 
Aristotle  and  from  Aristotle  back  to  the  philo- 
sophers of  India  has  always  been  Art  for  the 
sake  of  Life. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  speculate  as  to 
how  far  the  theosophical  movement  of  the 
seventies  and  eighties  influenced  the  outlook  of 
the  Pater- Wilde  school.  As  the  result  of  what 
would  in  philosophical  parlance  be  called  the 
degradation  of  aristocratic  values,  one  of  the 
inferior  religious  systems  of  the  East  was 
investigated  with  great  avidity  and  widely  pro- 
pagated in  England  and  America  by  bands  of 
enthusiasts.  There  is  an  important  philo- 
sophical distinction  between  Buddhism  (which 
forms  the  basis  of  theosophy)  and  Christianity  ; 
but  this  is  a  matter  which  I  have  dealt  with  at 
length  elsewhere.  It  will  be  sufficient  for  our 
purpose  to  say  here  that  both  religions  take  up 
a  negative  attitude  towards  life,  mankind,  and 
the  world  in  which  we  live.  The  attention  of 
the  Christian  is  centred  upon  his  after-life  in 
another  world  ;  and  the  aim  of  the  Buddhist 
is  to  reach  Nirvana  and  become  utterly  extinct. 

It  could  easily  be  shown  that  these  aims  are 
utterly    opposed    to    the    aims    of    the    Greek 

70 


OSCAR  WILDE 


philosophers  ;  and  they  are,  of  course,  inferior 
to  the  tenets  of  the  oldest  and  highest  of  Indian 
religions,  Brahminism.  So  far  as  we  can  now 
know,  there  was  only  one  philosopher  of  classic 
antiquity  whose  thoughts  had  what  might  be 
called  a  Buddhistic  tendency,  and  this  philo- 
sopher was  Plato.  It  is  of  no  little  significance 
for  us  to  know  that  Plato  exercised  such  a  large 
influence,  both  directly  and  indirectly,  on  the 
romanticists  of  the  eighties.  It  is  strange  to 
note,  and  the  reflection  is  tinged  with  irony,  how 
the  course  of  a  nation's  literature  for  a  genera- 
tion or  more  may  be  influenced  by  some  purely 
chance  event.  In  the  early  seventies  Professor 
Jowett  had  published  his  excellent  English  trans- 
lation of  Plato's  complete  works,  and  his  lucid 
and  well-written  introductions  and  notes  turned 
the  attention  of  hundreds  of  students  to  Plato 
rather  than  to  the  more  aristocratic  Greek 
philosophers,  such  as  Heraclitus  and  Aristotle. 
It  is  only  within  quite  recent  years  that  we 
have  had  a  good  version  of  Heraclitus  in  English, 
and  a  complete  version  of  Aristotle  still  remains 
to  be  published. 

It  is  true  that  Wilde  himself  possessed  a 
good  knowledge  of  Greek  and  appears  to  have 
read  much  of  Aristotle  in  the  original ;  but  the 

71 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

fact  nevertheless  remains  that  Jowett's  Plato, 
his  essays  on  Plato,  and  the  glamour  he  threw 
over  Plato,  gave  to  the  entire  thought  of  the 
time  a  Platonic  trend,  a  trend  which  was  in- 
directly accentuated  by  the  theosophical  move- 
ment which  I  have  already  referred  to.  The 
effect  of  all  this  was  that  life,  so  to  speak,  fell 
into  disrepute  and  its  place  was  taken  by  purely 
abstract  conceptions  of  beauty  and  art. 

Another  factor  of  the  utmost  importance  was 
also  entirely  overlooked  by  these  romantic 
writers  of  the  eighties  and  nineties.  It  never 
occurred  to  them  that  one  man  might  be  driven 
to  create  owing  to  his  superabundance  of 
creative  power  and  that  another  man  might 
be  driven  to  create  merely  as  the  result  of  his 
intellectual  poverty.  Only  the  first  mentioned 
can  be  truly  called  an  artist  at  all,  and  he  is  a 
classicist.  He  transforms  and  re-interprets  the 
chaos  of  nature  for  the  benefit  of  man  ;  or  as 
Mr.  A.  M.  Ludovici  expresses  it  in  his  Nietzsche 
and  Art :  **  Just  as  the  musician  cries  Time  ! 
Time  !  Time  !  to  the  cacophonous  medley  of 
natural  sounds  that  pour  into  his  ears  from  all 
sides  and  assembles  them  rhythmically  for  our 
ears  hostile  to  disorder,  so  the  graphic  artist 
cries  Time  !    Time  !    Time  !    to  the  incessant 

72 


OSCAR  WILDE 


and  kaleidoscopic  procession  of  things  from 
birth  to  death,  and  places  in  the  layman's  arms 
the  eternalised  image  of  that  portion  of  life  for 
which  he  happens  to  feel  great  gratitude/' 

The  romantic  artist,  however,  is  unable  to 
bring  order  out  of  chaos  in  this  way.  He  either 
paints  or  writes  something  entirely  unnatural, 
something  corresponding  to  no  reality  whatever, 
like  the  Nirvana  of  the  Buddhists ;  or  he 
contents  himself  by  merely  placing  nature  and 
reality  on  canvas  or  on  paper,  without  attempt- 
ing to  give  them  any  kind  of  re-interpretation. 

In  his  essay  on  The  Decay  of  Lying,  Wilde 
shows  us  that  he  had  at  all  events  a  glimpse  of 
this  truth.  He  saw  that  truth  itself — i.e.  mere 
naked  reality — could  not  properly  be  called 
art  at  all.  He  realised  that  it  was  grotesque 
to  suggest,  as  is  so  often  suggested  by  the  simple- 
minded  British  philistine  even  now,  that  art 
should  be  called  in  to  serve  morality ;  but 
unhappily  he  failed  to  see  that  art  should 
be  called  in  to  serve  life.  Wilde's  Hellenism 
easily  prevented  him  from  falling  into  the  first 
error,  and  his  influence  prevented  many  younger 
writers  of  the  time  from  doing  so  ;  but  unfor- 
tunately Plato's  influence  led  him  into  a  second 
error  which  counterbalanced   the  former,  viz., 

73 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

the  error  of  thinking  that  art  could  stand  alone. 
Mr.  Ludovici  has  concisely  summed  up  the 
classical  standard  by  saying  that  the  purpose  of 
man  is  a  thousand  times  more  important  than 
the  purpose  of  art,  and  the  one  determines  the 
other.  In  order  that  we  may  properly  under- 
stand Wilde's  point  of  view,  let  us  take  the 
following  paragraph  from  The  Decay  of  Lying : 

Art  begins  with  abstract  decoration,  with  purely 
imaginative  and  pleasurable  work  dealing  with  what 
is  unreal  and  non-existent.  This  is  the  first  stage. 
Then  Life  becomes  fascinated  with  this  new  wonder 
and  asks  to  be  admitted  into  the  charmed  circle. 
Art  takes  life  as  part  of  her  rough  material,  re-creates 
it,  and  re-fashions  it  in  fresh  forms,  is  absolutely 
indifferent  to  fact,  invents,  imagines,  brings  and 
keeps  between  herself  and  reality  the  impenetrable 
barrier  of  beautiful  style,  of  decorative  or  ideal  treat- 
ment. The  third  stage  is  when  Life  gets  the  upper 
hand  and  drives  Art  out  in  the  wilderness.  That  is 
the  true  decadence,  and  it  is  from  this  that  we  are 
now  suffering. 

This  argument  of  Wilde's  is  fallacious  ;  and 
in  using  it  he  failed  to  rise  above  his  age.  What 
Wilde  really  objected  to,  if  he  had  only  known 
it,  was  not  life  itself,  but  the  inferior  form  of  ex- 
istence brought  about  as  the  result  of  the  Liberal 
and  democratic  propaganda  which  had  lasted 
well  over  a  century.  The  writings  of  Liberal 
philosophers  from  Bentham  to  Mill  had  gradually 

74 


OSCAR  WILDE 


influenced  the  entire  artistic  and  philosophical 
outlook  of  England,  and  influenced  it  for  the 
worse.  The  main  principle  of  this  teaching 
was  that  all  men  were  equal,  one  of  the  most 
monstrous  fallacies  that  have  ever  been  taken 
for  granted  by  a  credulous  world.  Of  course,  if 
all  men  were  equal,  it  followed  that  there  could 
be  only  one  view  of  art,  truth,  or  beauty,  and 
similar  abstract  principles.  It  therefore  became 
necessary  to  discover  some  form  of  artistic 
truth  which  could  be  made  common  to  all, 
and  naturally  the  only  truth  which  could  be 
made  common  to  all  was  reality.  The  inevit- 
able result  was  Constable's  haystacks  ;  Frith's 
**  Derby  Day  "  ;  Holman  Hunt's  ''  Light  of 
the  World  "  ;  Martin  Tupper's  Proverbial  Philo- 
sophy ;  Browning's  Sordello,  and  similar  artistic 
and  literary  atrocities.  This  too  was  the  period 
when  portraits  were  actually  painted  to  repre- 
sent the  sitter  instead  of  being  painted  so  as 
to  enable  the  artist  to  re-interpret  life  through 
the  sitter,  who  is,  from  the  artistic  point  of 
view,  of  comparatively  little  importance. 

It  was  natural  for  Wilde  to  object  to  all  this 
democratised  art,  and,  had  it  not  been  for  the 
influence  of  Plato  and  his  English  disciples  of  the 
period,  Wilde  might  have  anticipated  many  of 

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the  theories  which  were  afterwards  laid  down 
with  such  admirable  clearness  by  Whistler. 
The  Platonic  influence  was  too  strong  for  him, 
however,  and  in  consequence  the  essays  gathered 
together  under  the  heading  of  Intentions  con- 
tain a  series  of  half-truths.  As  an  example  of 
this,  take  another  passage  from  The  Decay  of 
Lying  : 

Art  itself  is  really  a  form  of  exaggeration;  and 
selection,  which  is  the  very  spirit  of  art,  is  nothing 
more  than  an  intensified  mode  of  over-emphasis. 
But  Life  soon  shattered  the  perfection  of  the  form. 
Even  in  Shakespeare  we  can  see  the  beginning  of  the 
end.  It  shows  itself  by  the  gradual  breaking-up  of 
the  blank  verse  in  the  later  plays,  by  the  predominance 
given  to  prose,  and  by  the  over-importance  assigned 
to  characterisation.  The  passages  in  Shakespeare — 
and  they  are  many — where  the  language  is  uncouth, 
vulgar,  exaggerated,  fantastic,  obscene  even,  are 
entirely  due  to  Life  calling  for  an  echo  of  her  own 
voice,  and  rejecting  the  intervention  of  beautiful 
style  through  which  alone  should  life  be  suffered  to 
find  expression.  Shakespeare  is  not  by  any  means 
a  flawless  artist.  He  is  too  fond  of  going  directly 
to  life  and  borrowing  life's  natural  utterance.  He 
forgets  that  when  Art  surrenders  her  imaginative 
medium  she  surrenders  everything. 

The  accusation  here  is  just,  but  the  explanation 
inaccurate.  It  would  be  more  correct  to  say 
that  Shakespeare  goes  to  nature  too  much,  and 
"  to  hold  the  mirror  up  to  nature  '*  is,  as  Wilde 

76 


OSCAR  WILDE 


said,  the  worst  advice  that  could  be  given  to 
an  actor  or  a  dramatist.  It  is  not  fair,  however, 
to  lay  the  blame  of  this  upon  life  itself.  What 
should  be  blamed  is,  as  Heine  clearly  saw,  that 
romanticism  of  the  Middle  Ages  the  effects  of 
which  were  not  entirely  obliterated  even  by 
the  Renaissance. 

Wilde  touches  upon  this  matter  once  again 
in  his  essay  dealing  with  the  critic  as  artist, 
where  he  says  :  "  What  are  the  two  supreme 
and  highest  arts  ?  Life  and  literature,  life  and 
the  perfect  expression  of  life.*'  When  we  read 
a  little  further  and  find  him  referring  to  **  the 
fatal  development  of  the  habit  of  reading 
amongst  the  middle  and  lower  classes  of  this 
country,''  we  wonder  for  a  moment  whether  he 
has  actually  recognised  the  fact  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  artistic  hierarchy,  especially 
when  he  goes  on  to  refer  to  Greek  prose  com- 
position. But  this  merely  leads  up  to  a  dis- 
quisition on  a  subject  which,  however  impor- 
tant, is  hardly  one  we  might  have  expected 
to  meet  with.  We  do  not  find  artistic  hier- 
archy discussed,  but  there  are  some  very 
interesting  passages  on  the  critical  faculty 
and  its  use.  Some  twenty-five  years  pre- 
viously Matthew  Arnold  had  written  at  length 

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ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

on  "  the  function  of  criticism  at  the  present 
time,"  and  Wilde's  work  shows  that  he  was 
not  uninfluenced  by  what  our  one  really 
great  critic  of  the  nineteenth  century  had 
said.  One  of  the  most  significant  passages  in 
Arnold's  essay  is  this  : 

The  critical  power  is  of  lower  rank  than  the  creative. 
True  ;  but  in  assenting  to  this  proposition,  one  or 
two  things  are  to  be  kept  in  mind.  It  is  undeniable 
that  the  exercise  of  a  creative  power,  that  a  free 
creative  activity  is  the  true  function  of  man ;  it  is 
proved  to  be  so  by  man's  finding  in  it  his  true  happi- 
ness. But  it  is  undeniable  also  that  men  may  have 
the  sense  of  exercising  this  free  creative  activity 
in  other  ways  than  in  producing  great  works  of  litera- 
ture or  art ;  if  it  were  not  so,  all  but  a  very  few  men 
would  be  shut  out  from  the  true  happiness  of  all  men  ; 
they  may  have  it  in  well-doing  ;  they  may  have  it 
in  learning,  they  may  have  it  even  in  criticising.  .  .  . 
The  creative  power  has  for  its  happy  exercise  appointed 
elements,  and  those  elements  are  not  in  its  own  control. 
Nay,  they  are  more  within  the  control  of  the  critical 
power.  It  is  the  business  of  the  critical  power  in  all 
branches  of  knowledge,  theology,  philosophy,  history, 
art,  science,  to  see  the  object  as  in  itself  it  really  is. 
Thus  it  tends  at  last  to  make  an  intellectual  situation 
of  which  the  creative  power  can  profitably  avail 
itself.  It  tends  to  establish  an  order  of  ideas,  if  not 
absolutely  true,  yet  true  by  comparison  with  that 
which  it  displaces  ;  to  make  the  best  ideas  prevail. 
Presently  these  new  ideas  reach  society.  The  touch 
of  truth  is  the  touch  of  life,  and  there  is  a  stir  and 
growth  everywhere ;  out  of  this  stir  and  growth 
come  the  creative  epochs  of  literature. 

78 


OSCAR   WILDE 


Or  to  narrow  our  range  and  quit  these  considera- 
tions of  the  general  march  of  genius  and  of  society, 
considerations  which  are  apt  to  become  too  abstract 
and  impalpable — every  one  can  see  that  a  poet,  for 
instance,  ought  to  know  life  and  the  world  before 
dealing  with  poetry,  and  life  and  the  world  being,  in 
modern  times,  very  complex  things,  the  creation  of 
a  modern  poet,  to  be  worth  much,  implies  a  great 
critical  effort  behind  it ;  else  it  must  be  a  comparatively 
poor,  barren,  and  short-lived  affair. 

With  his  customary  insight,  Matthew  Arnold 
has  here  penetrated  to  the  very  root  of 
the  matter,  but  his  theories,  after  Wilde  has 
meditated  upon  them,  are  found  to  be  sus- 
ceptible of  a  little  exaggeration.  If  we  turn 
once  more  to  Wilde's  essay  on  the  critic  as 
artist,  we  find  him  saying  : 

Without  the  critical  faculty  there  is  no  artistic 
creation  at  all  worthy  of  the  name.  An  age  that  has 
no  criticism  is  either  an  age  in  which  art  is  immobile, 
hieratic,  and  confined  to  the  reproduction  of  formal 
types,  or  an  age  that  possesses  no  art  at  all.  .  .  . 
There  has  never  been  a  creative  age  that  has  not 
been  critical  also.  For  it  is  the  critical  faculty  that 
invents  fresh  forms.  The  tendency  of  creation  is  to 
repeat  itself. 

A  page  or  two  further  on  we  find  this  thought 
repeated,  for  Wilde  says :  "  Each  new  school 
as  it  appears  cries  out  against  criticism,  but  it 
is  to  the  critical  faculty  in  man  that  it  owes  its 

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ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

origin.     The   mere   creative   instinct   does   not 
innovate  but  reproduces." 

Up  to  this  point  Wilde  is  on  the  whole  seen 
to  be  in  sympathy  with  Arnold ;  but  the 
aesthetic  philosophy,  it  would  appear,  must 
needs  go  further.  Wilde  cannot  pause  when 
he  says  :  "  Most  modern  criticism  is  perfectly 
valueless.  So  is  most  modern  creative  work 
also.  Mediocrity  weighing  mediocrity  in  the 
balance  and  incompetence  applauding  its 
brother — that  is  the  spectacle  which  the  artistic 
activity  of  England  affords  us  from  time  to 
time.''  After  this  comes  the  unexpected  dogma  : 
*'  Criticism  demands  infinitely  more  cultivation 
than  creation  itself.  Anybody  can  write  a 
three-volumed  novel.  It  merely  requires  a 
complete  ignorance  of  both  life  and  literature. 
...  It  is  very  much  more  difficult  to  talk 
about  a  thing  than  to  do  it.  In  the  sphere  of 
actual  life  that  is,  of  course,  obvious.  Anybody 
can  make  history.  Only  a  great  man  can  write 
about  it.  .  .  .  Action,  indeed,  is  always  easy, 
and  when  presented  to  us  in  its  most  aggravated, 
because  most  continuous  form,  which  I  take  to 
be  that  of  real  industry,  becomes  simply  the 
refuge  of  people  who  have  nothing  whatsoever 
to  do." 

go 


OSCAR  WILDE 


After  this  the  essay  degenerates  for  a  time 
into  Buddhism,  and  we  learn  that  in  the  sphere 
of  action  a  conscious  aim  is  a  delusion  and  that 
*'  there  has  been  no  material  improvement 
that  has  not  spiritualised  the  world/*  In  the 
last  case,  of  course,  Wilde  is  endeavouring  to 
explain  away  the  English  materialism  of  the 
time.  He  saw  that  materialism  brought  with 
it  a  certain  complementary  artistic  movement ; 
but  he  did  not  recognise  that  this  movement 
was  idealistic  rather  than  classic. 

Once  more  Wilde  approaches  the  truth  in  the 
course  of  this  essay  when  he  refers  to  Pater*s 
view  of  criticism  and  quotes  his  remarks  on 
"  La  Gioconda,"  adding  :  *'  The  criticism  which 
I  have  quoted  is  criticism  of  the  highest  kind. 
It  treats  the  work  of  art  simply  as  a  starting- 
point  for  a  new  creation.  It  does  not  confine 
itself — let  us  at  least  suppose  so  for  the  moment 
— to  discovering  the  real  intention  of  the  artist 
and  accepting  that  as  final.  And  in  this  it  is 
right,  for  the  meaning  of  any  beautiful  created 
thing  is,  at  least,  as  much  in  the  soul  of  him 
who  looks  at  it  as  it  was  in  his  soul  who  wrought 
it.  Nay,  it  is  rather  the  beholder  who  lends  to 
the  beautiful  thing  its  myriad  meanings  and 
makes  it  marvellous  for  us.'' 

6  8i 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Here  once  again  Wilde  appears  to  forget  the 
importance  of  artistic  hierarchy.  We  may 
easily  pardon  Walter  Pater  for  looking  at 
Leonardo's  famous  picture  and  reading  into  it 
a  meaning  which  Leonardo  himself  did  not  in- 
tend to  be  read  there.  But  what  was  likely  to 
happen  had  any  one  of  those  middle-class  philis- 
tines,  against  whom  Wilde  himself  railed  so 
heartily,  looked  at  "La  Gioconda  "  ?  It  is,  in- 
deed, only  too  easy  to  answer  this  question :  we 
can  see  for  ourselves  what  has  happened  in  the 
mediocre  art,  mediocre  literature,  and  deplor- 
able literary  and  artistic  criticism  of  the  present 
day.  The  inferior  mind  of  the  middle-class  has 
become  dominant  in  politics,  theology,  litera- 
ture, and  art.  In  consequence  of  this  a  high 
type  of  creative  work  no  longer  exists  among 
us ;  and,  worse  still,  the  types  of  really  good 
creative  work  which  have  been  handed  down 
to  us  are  not  appreciated. 

It  is  well  worth  while  continuing  our  analysis 
of  this  particular  essay,  because  in  it  the  entire 
philosophy  of  the  romantic  school  may  be  said 
to  be  summed  up.  As  in  the  case  of  most  of 
the  critical  essays  by  Wilde  and  Pater — not  to 
mention  Mr.  Arthur  Symons  and  other  members 
of  the  school — ^we  find  classicism  alternating 

82 


OSCAR  WILDE 


with  romanticism.  Wilde  seemed  to  know, 
for  example,  that  tradition  played  a  necessary 
part  in  art,  for  he  says  :  ''To  realise  the  nine- 
teenth century,  we  must  realise  every  century 
that  has  preceded  it  and  that  has  contributed 
to  its  making."  But  this  statement  is  followed 
at  no  great  distance  by  another :  **  The  BIOS 
eEXlPHTIKOS  is  the  true  ideal.  From  the  high 
tower  of  thought  we  can  look  out  upon  the 
world.  Calm  and  self-centred  and  complete, 
the  aesthetic  critic  contemplates  life,  and  no 
arrow  drawn  at  a  venture  can  pierce  between 
the  joints  of  his  harness.  He  at  least  is  safe. 
He  has  discovered  how  to  live.'*  This,  it  need 
hardly  be  said,  is  Buddhism  rather  than  Hellen- 
ism, and  Wilde  falls  away  from  the  classical 
ideal  when  he  says  a  few  lines  further  on  : 
**  Action  of  every  kind  belongs  to  the  sphere 
of  ethics  ;  the  aim  of  art  is  simply  to  create  a 
mood.''  This  is  very  far  from  the  re-interpre- 
tation of  nature  for  the  benefit  of  man  ;  but 
it  is  an  echo  of  some  of  Pater's  ideas.  For 
Pater,  it  will  be  remembered,  did  not  see  men 
or  nature  whole,  but  contented  himself  with 
interpreting  and  describing  a  few  characteristics, 
a  few  moods.  It  is  possible  that  the  joint  influ- 
ence of  Pater  and  Wilde  induced  Mr.  Symons 

83 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

to  write  a  few  years  later  in  the  preface  to  the 
second  edition  of  London  Nights  : 

The  moods  of  man  !  There  I  find  my  subject,  there 
the  region  over  which  art  rules  ;  and  whatever  has 
once  been  a  mood  of  mine,  though  it  has  been  no 
more  than  a  ripple  of  the  sea  and  had  no  longer  than 
that  ripple's  duration,  I  claim  the  right  to  render,  if 
I  can,  in  verse. 

Compare  this  with  another  remark  made  by 
Wilde  in  the  essay  from  which  I  have  already 
quoted  :  *'  Each  mode  of  criticism  is  at  its 
highest  development  simply  a  mood,  and  we  are 
never  more  true  to  ourselves  than  when  we  are 
inconsistent.  The  aesthetic  critic,  constant  only 
to  the  principle  of  beauty  in  all  things,  will  ever 
be  looking  for  fresh  impressions,  winning  from 
the  various  schools  the  secret  of  their  charm, 
bowing,  it  may  be,  before  foreign  altars,  or 
smiling,  if  it  be  his  fancy,  at  strange  new  gods.'' 
All  art,  then,  according  to  this,  is  simply  a 
mood  ;  criticism  itself  is  simply  a  mood  ;  and 
we  are  to  create  these  moods  by  borrowing 
principles  from  every  school  that  has  ever 
existed.  Whatever  may  be  created  in  this 
fashion  will  be  anything  but  a  classical  school 
of  art.  The  plan  of  winning  various  charms 
from  various  schools  is  but  a  reminiscence  of 
Plato's   theory   that  a  school  could  be  created 

84 


OSCAR   WILDE 


by  combining  classicism  and  romanticism.  A 
medley  of  principles,  however,  inevitably  leads 
to  discord,  and  this  clashes  with  one  of  the 
main  principles  of  classicism,  viz.,  simplicity. 

As  we  approach  the  end  of  the  essay  it  is 
clear  that  the  romantic  element  in  it  pre- 
dominates, as  it  predominated  in  the  closing 
years  of  Wilde's  life.  We  come  across  frequent 
references  to  Plato  and  elaborations  of  his 
theories,  such,  for  example,  as  "  Art  .  .  .  does 
not  spring  from  inspiration,  but  it  makes  others 
inspired.  Reason  is  not  the  faculty  to  which 
it  appeals.  If  one  loves  Art  at  all,  one  must 
love  it  beyond  all  other  things  in  the  world,  and 
against  such  love  the  reason,  if  one  listened  to 
it,  would  cry  out.  There  is  nothing  sane 
about  the  worship  of  beauty.  It  is  too  splendid 
to  be  sane.  Those  of  whose  lives  it  forms  the 
dominant  note  will  always  seem  to  the  world 
to  be  pure  visionaries."  The  classicist,  of 
course,  also  loves  art  and  .beauty ;  but  there^^ 
is  one  thing  he  loves  better,  and  that  is  life. 
Art  for  the:;^l<e  of  life,  the  principle  of  classic- 
ism, wouleUilt^ccord  with  art  beyond  all  else, 
the  principle'  of  Wilde's  romanticism. 

This,  then,  is  the  great  distinction,  and  it  is 
so  well  seen  in  this  one  essay  that,  from  the 

85 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

critical  point  of  view,  Wilde's  other  works 
hardly  concern  us.  It  must  nevertheless  be 
said  that  he  himself  was  a  better  artist  than  he 
was  a  theorist.  His  remarks  on  men  and 
things,  now  bitter  and  now  paradoxical,  are 
never  out  of  place.  How  well  he  sums  up  one 
of  our  best  known  of  modern  writers,  when 
he  says,  referring  to  Mr.  Kipling,  *'  As  one  turns 
over  the  pages  of  his  Plain  Talks  from  the  Hills, 
one  feels  as  if  one  were  seated  under  a  palm 
tree  reading  life  by  superb  flashes  of  vulgarity. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  literature,  Mr.  Kipling 
is  a  genius  who  drops  his  aspirates."  And 
how  right  he  is  again  when  he  says,  through  the 
mouth  of  Lord  Darlington,  in  Lady  Winder- 
mere's  Fan  :  "  Between  men  and  women  there 
is  no  friendship  possible.  There  is  passion, 
enmity,  worship,  love,  but  no  friendship.*' 
Modern  journalism,  again,  is  dealt  with  once 
and  for  all  in  that  politely  ironical  passage  : 
**  There  is  much  to  be  said  in  favour  of  modern 
journalism.  By  giving  us  the  opinions  of  the 
uneducated,  it  keeps  us  in  touch  with  the 
ignorance  of  the  community.  By  carefully 
chronicling  the  current  events  of  contemporary 
life,  it  shows  us  of  what  very  little  importance 
such  events  really  are.  By  invariably  dis- 
86 


OSCAR  WILDE 


cussing  the  unnecessary,  it  makes  us  under- 
stand what  things  are  requisite  for  culture  and 
what  are  not."  And  if  we  want  to  know  about 
the  origin  of  the  mentality  of  the  nihilist  we 
can  find  few  better  descriptions  than  this : 
**  The  nihilist,  that  strange  martyr  who  has  no 
faith,  who  goes  to  the  stake  without  enthusiasm 
and  dies  for  what  he  does  not  believe  in,  is 
purely  a  literary  product.  He  was  invented 
by  Tourgenieff  and  completed  by  Dostoieffski." 
There  is  a  sly  hit  in  :  *'  Modern  pictures  are  no 
doubt  beautiful  to  look  at.  At  least  some  of 
them  are.  But  they  are  quite  impossible  to 
live  with  ;  they  are  too  clever  ;  too  assertive  ; 
too  intellectual.  Their  meaning  is  too  obvious 
and  their  method  too  clearly  defined.  One 
exhausts  what  they  have  to  say  in  a  very  short 
time,  and  then  they  become  as  tedious  as  one's 
relations." 

I  do  not,  however,  profess  to  give  even  a 
tithe  of  Wilde's  epigrams ;  for  that  would 
mean  quoting  Dorian  Gray  and  most  of  his 
plays  almost  in  full ;  but  we  must  not  let  the 
wittiness  of  his  epigrams  blind  us  to  the  fact 
that  they  were  all  prepared  with  infinite  care 
and  skill  and  that  in  most  of  them  the  wit  is 
based  on  sound  scholarship,  keen  observation, 

87 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

and  much  more  than  merely  superficial  insight 
into  men  and  things.  It  does  not  matter  to 
us  that  Wilde  himself  failed  to  put  into  practice 
his  own  theories  regarding  beauty  ;  or  that 
very  often  in  his  essays  he  confused  the  tech- 
nique of  art  with  art  itself.  As  he  says  in 
Dorian  Gray,  the  value  of  an  idea  has  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  the  sincerity  of  the  man 
who  expresses  it — indeed,  the  probabilities  are 
that  the  more  insincere  the  man  is,  the  more 
purely  intellectual  will  the  idea  be,  as,  in  that 
case,  it  will  not  be  coloured  by  either  his  wants, 
his  desires,  or  his  prejudices.  Nor  need  we 
lay  too  much  stress  on  Wilde's  posing  and 
attitudinising.  He  went  about  with  sun- 
flowers, poppies,  and  lilies  for  much  the  same 
reason  as  induced  Disraeli  to  wear  yellow 
waistcoats  with  blue  trousers.  His  dress,  his 
poses,  his  paradoxes,  all  had  the  effect  of  at- 
tracting public  attention  and  of  causing  art 
and  beauty  to  be  discussed  seriously  in  circles 
where  they  had  hitherto  been  taken  too  much 
for  granted.  Wilde  may  have  been  right  or 
wrong,  but  he  was  at  all  events  a  stimulant. 

Unfortunately  Wilde's  craving  for  new  sensa- 
tions led  him  into  forbidden  paths.  To  what 
chiefly  must  we  attribute  his  perverted  sexual 

88 


OSCAR  WILDE 


instincts  ?  We  have  not,  unfortunately,  all 
the  documents  connected  with  his  life  and 
works  which  are  likely  to  throw  any  new  light 
on  this  subject.  If  I  am  correctly  informed, 
Mr.  Robert  Ross,  for  example,  still  possesses 
several  unpublished  portions  of  the  De  Pro- 
fundis,  and  these,  it  is  almost  certain,  will 
prove  of  inestimable  advantage  to  the  psycho- 
logist who  is  genuinely  interested  in  Wilde's 
character.  It  is  difficult,  again,  to  go  fully 
into  the  matter  without  hurting  the  feelings 
of  many  people  who  are  still  living  ;  but  from 
Wilde's  own  works  (particularly  Dorian  Gray 
and  De  Profundis)  and  also  from  his  published 
letters,  a  certain  amount  of  trustworthy  in- 
formation can  be  obtained. 

It  must,  above  all,  be  borne  in  mind  that 
Wilde  came  of  an  unusually  cultured  family,  and 
that  his  mother  especially  was  a  very  remark- 
able woman.  She  was,  indeed,  of  so  remark- 
able a  temperament  that  Wilde,  in  my  opinion, 
must  have  been  born  with  an  extraordinarily 
delicate  nervous  system  and  must  have  been 
influenced  from  a  very  early  age  by  an  organic 
neurosis,  the  effects  of  which  on  his  character 
were  not  mitigated  or  counterbalanced  by  his 
merely  muscular  strength. 

89 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

In  this  delicate  and  nervous  condition  Wilde 
went  up  to  Oxford  from  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
at  a  time  of  life  when  his  character  was  more  than 
usually  liable  to  be  influenced  by  his  surround- 
ings. Now,  the  moral  side  of  Oxford  has  been 
so  concisely  explained  by  Mr.  R.  H.  Sherard 
in  his  Life  of  Oscar  Wilde  that  I  cannot  do  better 
than  quote  the  passage  in  question  : 

For  there  is  no  use  denying  it :  Oxford,  which  is 
the  finest  school  in  the  world  for  the  highest  culture, 
is  also  the  worst  training-ground  for  the  lowest  forms 
of  debauchery.  It  all  depends  on  the  character  of 
the  student,  his  early  home- training,  his  natural 
propensities,  his  physical  state,  his  religious  belief. 
Oxford  produces  side  by  side  the  saint,  the  sage,  and 
the  depraved  libertine.  She  sends  men  to  Parnassus 
or  to  the  public-house,  the  Latium  or  the  lenocinium. 
The  Dons  ignore  the  very  horrors  which  are  going  on 
under  their  very  eyes.  They  are  wrapped  up  in  the 
petty  concerns  of  the  University  hierarchy ;  they  are 
of  men  the  most  unpractical  and  least  worldly  ;  while 
possibly  their  deep  classical  studies  have  so  familiarised 
them  with  certain  pathological  manifestations  that 
they  really  fail  to  understand  the  horror  of  much  that 
is  the  common  jest  of  the  undergraduates.  Oxford 
has  rendered  incalculable  service  to  the  Empire,  but 
she  has  also  fostered  and  sent  forth  great  numbers 
of  men  who  have  contributed  to  poison  English  society. 
It  is  very  possible  that  if  Sir  William  Wilde  had  not 
sent  his  second  son  to  Oxford,  but  had  left  him  in 
Ireland,  where  certain  forms  of  perversion  are  totally 
unknown,  and  where  vice  generally  is  regarded  with 
universal  horror  which  contrasts  most  strongly  with 

90 


OSCAR  WILDE 


the  mischievous  tolerances  which  EngHsh  society 
manifests  towards  it,  Oscar  would  now  be  living  in 
Dublin,  one  of  the  lights  of  Trinity  College,  one  of 
the  glories  of  Ireland,  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman  of 
universal  reputation. 

No  one  who  is  well  acquainted  with  the  life 
of  undergraduates  at  the  two  great  universities 
will  venture  to  doubt  Mr.  Sherard's  words  ; 
and  I  think  it  is  unquestionable  that  it  was 
while  at  Oxford  that  Wilde  for  the  first  time 
became  familiar  with  the  form  of  debauchery 
which  finally  resulted  in  his  expulsion  from 
society.  Whatever  extenuating  circumstances 
there  might  have  been  in  connection  with  the 
particular  case  for  which  Wilde  was  sentenced 
to  two  years'  imprisonment  in  May  1895,  the 
middle-class  public,  forgetting  some  of  the 
principles  of  Wilde's  own  teaching  and  taking 
everything  he  had  written  at  its  face  value, 
pointed  triumphantly  to  Dorian  Gray  as  abso- 
lutely certain  proof  that  the  author  of  it  had 
all  along  been  a  perverted  criminal  at  heart. 
Certainly  the  book  is  partly  autobiographical, 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  Wilde  in  real  life 
ever  tried  to  do  what  Dorian  Gray  did  in  fiction. 
The  book  is  rather  an  idealistic  attempt  to  show 
how  certain  sensations  might  be  procured  and 

91 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

the  sufferings  which  would  inevitably  overcome 
any  man  who  tried  to  procure  them.  The 
references  to  Dorian  Gray's  '*  mysterious  and 
prolonged  absences/'  *'  his  sordid  room  in  the 
little  ill-famed  tavern  near  the  docks,"  **  his 
mad  hungers  that  grew  more  ravenous  as  he 
fed  them,"  and  so  on,  may  be  taken  for  what 
they  are  worth.  We  may  oppose  to  them  the 
references  to  the  aesthetic  side  of  Dorian  Gray, 
his  liking  for  the  Roman  Catholic  ritual,  his 
dabbling  in  mysticism,  his  study  of  perfumes, 
his  collection  of  strange  musical  instruments 
from  all  corners  of  the  earth,  his  love  of  jewellery, 
and  the  extraordinary  heap  of  fine  stones  he 
got  together,  not  to  speak  of  his  passion  for 
embroideries,  tapestries,  and  ecclesiastical  vest- 
ments. In  the  minds  of  that  portion  of  the 
public  who  followed  the  progress  of  the  aesthetic 
movement  and  its  leader  with  awe  and  horror, 
such  collections  of  aesthetic  ornaments,  such 
concrete  representations  of  beauty  and  art, 
almost  came  to  be  associated  with  sexual 
debauchery  and  sexual  perversion.  It  was  no 
wonder,  then,  that  Wilde's  sentence  was  looked 
upon  as  the  slow  but  certain  justice  of  an  out- 
raged Supreme  Power.  It  had  the  effect  not 
only  of  bringing  to  a  sudden  termination  the 
92 


OSCAR   WILDE 


aesthetic  movement  in  England,  but  of  covering 
with  obloquy  all  those  who  had  been  associated 
with  it. 

From  the  late  nineties  onward  we  heard  very 
little  of  the  literary,  philosophical,  political,  or 
sociological  movements  which  had  been  initiated 
about  the  eighties.  Professor  George  Saints- 
bury,  Mr.  Austin  Dobson,  and  Mr.  Edmund 
Gosse  have  ceased  to  write  with  their  former 
fervour  and  vigour.  Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw 
and  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  have  gradually  laid  less 
and  less  emphasis  upon  their  former  extreme 
socialistic  opinions,  and,  instead  of  leading  us 
towards  the  millennium,  they  have  settled 
down  into  wealthy^and  thoroughly  respectable 
members  of  the  upper  bourgeoisie.  If  Mr. 
George  Moore  and  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats  have  not 
become  quite  so  successful  in  a  worldly  sense, 
they  do  not  at  all  events  write  with  the  same 
enthusiasm  and  passion  as  of  yore.  The 
romantic  movement  of  the  eighties  and  nineties, 
then,  soon  exhausted  itself.  A  few  of  its  repre- 
sentatives, like  Dowson  and  Lionel  Johnson, 
died  sad  deaths  ;  its  foremost  figure  was  put  in 
gaol ;  and  others,  reserved  for  a  worse  fate, 
became  respectable  members  of  society. 

After  Wilde  had  been  released  from  prison, 

93 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

he  produced  The  Ballad  of  Reading  Gaol  and 
the  De  Profundis.  The  ballad  is  far  from 
carrying  into  practice  Wilde's  theories  of  what 
poetic  composition  should  be,  and  the  De 
Profundis  is,  of  course,  chiefly  remarkable  as 
a  biographical  document. 

One  is  naturally  tempted  to  ask  whether 
Wilde  means  everything  he  says  in  the  De 
Profundis  or  whether — if  we  may  adapt  a  phrase 
from  Dr.  Johnson — a  man  who  has  posed  all 
his  life  will  pose  to  the  last.  The  book  is  the 
work  of  a  broken,  despairing  man  ;  but  here 
and  there  the  style  displays  a  certain  amount 
of  affectation,  though  the  book  must  not 
on  this  account  be  treated  as  a  hypocritical 
document.  Like  all  other  people  who  are  in 
the  depths,  Wilde  naturally  turns  to  Chris- 
tianity and  Platonism  for  such  relief  as  they 
can  afford  him.  Hence  the  emphasis  which 
is  laid  upon  sorrow  and  suffering  : 

Clergymen  and  people  who  use  phrases  without 
wisdom  sometimes  talk  of  suffering  as  a  mystery. 
It  is  really  a  revelation.  One  discerns  things  one 
never  discerned  before.  ...  I  now  see  that  sorrow, 
being  the  supreme  emotion  of  which  man  is  capable, 
is  at  once  the  type  and  test  of  all  great  art.  .  .  . 
Truth  in  art  is  the  unity  of  a  thing  with  itself  ;  the 
outward  rendered  expressive  of  the  inward ;  the  soul 
made  incarnate  ;   the  body  instinct  with  spirit.    For 

94 


OSCAR  WILDE 


this  reason  there  is  no  truth  comparable  to  sorrow. 
There  are  times  when  sorrow  appears  to  me  to  be 
the  only  truth.  Other  things  may  be  illusions  of  the 
eye  or  the  appetite,  made  to  blind  the  one  and  cloy 
the  other,  but  out  of  sorrow  have  the  worlds  been 
built,  and  at  the  birth  of  a  child  or  a  star  there  is 
pain.  .  .  .  The  secret  of  life  is  suffering.  ...  It  is 
what  is  hidden  behind  everything. 

Apart  from  the  fact  that  Wilde  is  here  con- 
fusing sorrow  with  mere  physical  pain,  there  is 
a  factor  underlying  this  and  similar  outbursts 
in  the  book  which  has  never  been  sufficiently 
taken  into  account,  viz.,  that  Wilde  is  here  speak- 
ing as  what  Nietzsche  would  call  an  inferior  man. 
He  has  been  degraded,  he  is  suffering,  he  is 
wretched,  and  in  order  to  justify  his  degradation 
and  sorrow  and  wretchedness,  he  endeavours  to 
set  them  upon  a  philosophical  foundation,  and 
to  use  this  foundation  in  addition  as  the  basis 
of  a  new  theory  of  art  and  truth. 

The  romanticist  in  Wilde,  however,  is  easily 
seen  when,  further  on  in  the  book,  he  writes  : 
"  I  remember  saying  once  to  Andre  Gide  as 
we  supped  together  in  some  Paris  cafe  that  while 
metaphysics  had  but  little  real  interest  for  me  and 
morality  absolutely  none,  there  was  nothing  that 
either  Plato  or  Christ  had  said  that  could  not  be 
transferred  immediately  into  the  sphere  of  art 
and  there  find  its  complete  fulfilment." 

95 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

It  is  true  that  what  Plato  and  Christ  said  may 
be  adequately  represented  in  art  and  has 
indeed  been  so  represented  by  the  Italian 
painters  of  the  period  immediately  preceding 
the  Renaissance,  as  well  as  by  several  English 
painters  of  modern  times.  But  it  does  not 
seem  to  occur  to  Wilde  that  such  art  is  utterly 
inferior:  it  depresses  man,  throws  a  doubt  on  the 
present  world  and  makes  life  itself  seem  value- 
less. What,  one  may  ask,  would  have  been 
produced  in  India  and  Greece  and  Rome  if  art 
had  been  subjected  to  the  unique  test  of  sorrow  ? 

This  failure  to  distinguish  between  the 
superior  and  inferior  art  was  the  inevitable 
outcome  of  the  philosophy  of  the  romantic 
school.  There  was  no  real  test  for  art  judged 
merely  as  art ;  there  was  a  very  real  test  for 
art  judged  as  an  aid  to  life.  None  of  those 
who  took  part  in  the  aesthetic  movement 
ever  thought  of  applying  this  test,  and  they 
are  therefore  unable  to  recognise  when  they  are 
moving  on  a  high  plane  and  when  they  are 
moving  on  a  low  plane.  Wilde  is  quite  right 
when  he  says  in  the  De  Profundis  that  Christ 
was  not  merely  the  supreme  individualist,  but 
that  He  was  the  first  individualist  in  history, 
and  when  he  indicates  again  that  Christ  was  the 

96 


OSCAR  WILDE 


precursor  of  the  romantic  movement  in  life, 
and  that  He  took  children  as  the  type  of  what 
people  should  try  to  become.  Wilde  makes  all 
these  statements  in  justification  of  his  unfortu- 
nate position  ;  but  he  does  not  see  that  they 
condemn  him  for  ever  as  an  idealist  and  roman- 
ticist and  consequently  as  an  inferior  artist. 

While,  however,  Wilde's  works  are  not  des- 
tined to  be  permanent  in  the  sense  that  we 
speak  of  Cicero  or  Homer  as  permanent,  they 
will  nevertheless  last  long.  Where  our  own 
language  is  concerned  they  are  distinctive. 
No  other  English  writer  can  give  us  at  the 
same  time  such  brilliant  persiflage,  such  biting 
cynicism,  and  such  expressive  style.  Like  Dr. 
Johnson,  indeed,  he  may  go  down  to  posterity 
by  his  conversation  alone  long  after  his  works 
have  been  forgotten.  In  spite  of  the  efforts 
of  many  whom  Wilde  knew  intimately,  however, 
it  seems  to  me— more  especially  as  Mr.  Robert 
Ross  has  up  to  the  present  held  his  hand — 
that  a  really  complete  account  of  the  man  has 
yet  to  be  prepared.  He  was  the  leader  of  a 
movement  and  he  had  many  disciples.  But, 
as  he  himself  said,  all  great  men  have  their 
disciples  nowadays,  and  it  is  usually  Judas  who 
writes  the  biography. 

7  97 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE    "YELLOW  BOOK"   SCHOOL 

In  the  eighties  and  nineties  various  publications 
aimed  at  producing  something  new  in  literature 
and  art.  The  best  known  were  probably  the 
National  Observer,  which  Henley  edited  at  one 
time,  The  Yellow  Book,  and  The  Savoy.  The 
Pageant  and  The  Dome  were  unfortunately  too 
short-lived  to  exercise  any  serious  influence. 
The  traditions  of  all  these  periodicals  may  be 
said  to  be  merged  to  a  great  extent  in  the 
present  New  Age,  Of  the  older  publications 
referred  to  The  Yellow  Book  was  undoubtedly 
the  most  important,  and  may  likewise  be  said 
to  have  been  the  most  representative.  Like  The 
Savoy  and  The  Dome  it  attained  the  height  of 
its  brilliancy  with  the  first  few  numbers.  Its 
art  editor  in  1894  (when  it  began  to  be  pub- 
lished) was  Aubrey  Beardsley,  and  its  literary 
editor  Henry  Harland.  When  Beardsley  left 
The  Yellow  Book,  however,  its  fortunes  began  to 
decline ;  for  all  the  exertions  of  talented  artists 

98 


THE  ^^ YELLOW  BOOK"  SCHOOL 

could  not  make  up  for  the  drawings  of  the  one 
artist  among  them  who  was  a  genius. 

The  Yellow  Book  series  certainly  opened 
brilliantly.  Volume  I  contained  what  was 
probably  the  best  article  in  the  set  of  thirteen 
volumes — A  Defence  of  Cosmetics,  by  Max 
Beerbohm — and  the  other  items  are,  to  say  the 
least,  meritorious.  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson,  Professor 
George  Saintsbury,  and  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  wrote 
with  a  freshness,  and,  indeed,  one  might  even  say 
a  fervour,  which  is  lacking  in  their  later  works. 
Mr.  Waugh's  essay  entitled  Reticence  in  Litera- 
ture will  call  for  some  further  comment  in  the 
course  of  this  chapter ;  and  the  two  poems  by 
Mr.  John  Davidson  {London  and  Down-a-down) 
are  thoroughly  Davidsonian.  At  least  a  dozen 
other  articles  or  poems  are  distinctive  and 
superior,  and  Beardsley  is,  if  not  at  his  best, 
at  all  events  far  above  the  other  artists  who 
collaborated  with  him. 

Mr.  Max  Beerbohm's  brilliant  Defence  of 
Cosmetics  does  not  readily  lend  itself  to  quota- 
tion ;  but  Mr.  Arthur  Waugh's  Reticence  in 
Literature  deserves  to  have  the  attention  of 
a  twentieth  -  century  public  directed  to  it. 
Many  of  the  views  expressed  in  it  are  such  as 
we  should  not  have  generally  expected  to  find 

99 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

uttered  in  the  nineties,  and  in  any  case  only  a 
man  like  Harland  would  have  had  judgment 
enough  at  that  time  to  publish  them  at  all.  I 
take  the  following  from  Mr.  Waugh's  essay  : 

We  may  take  it  as  a  rough  working  axiom  that  the 
point  of  reticence  in  literature,  judged  by  a  con- 
temporary standard,  should  be  settled  by  the  point 
of  reticence  in  the  conversation  and  the  taste  and 
culture  of  the  age.  .  .  .  The  course  of  the  highest 
thought  of  the  time  should  be  the  course  of  its  litera- 
ture, the  limit  of  the  most  dehcate  taste  of  the  time 
the  limit  of  literary  expression  :  whatever  falls  below 
that  standard  is  a  shortcoming,  whatever  exceeds  it 
is  a  violence.  Obviously  the  standard  varies  im- 
mensely with  the  period.  .  .  .  Art,  we  say,  claims 
every  subject  for  her  own  ;  she  may  fairly  gather  her 
subjects  where  she  will.  Most  true.  But  there  is 
all  the  difference  in  the  world  between  drawing  life 
as  we  find  it,  sternly  and  relentlessly,  surveying  it  all 
the  while  from  outside  with  the  calm,  unflinching 
gaze  of  criticism,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  yielding 
ourselves  to  the  warmth  and  colour  of  its  excesses, 
losing  our  judgment  in  the  ecstasies  of  the  joy  of  life, 
becoming,  in  a  word,  effeminate.  ...  It  is  unmanly, 
it  is  effeminate,  it  is  inartistic,  to  gloat  over  pleasure, 
to  revel  in  immoderation,  to  become  passion's  slave ; 
and  literature  demands  as  much  calmness  of  judgment, 
as  much  reticence,  as  life  itself.  The  man  who  loses 
reticence  loses  self-respect,  and  the  man  who  has 
no  respect  for  himself  will  scarcely  find  others  to 
venerate  him. 

Mr.  Waugh  goes  on  to  refer  to  the  realistic 
movement  in  English  literature  in  the  latter  part 

100 


THE    '^YELLOW   BOOK"   SCHOOL 

of  the  nineteenth  century,  when,  as  he  rightly 
says,  the  English  man-of-letters  indulged  with 
an  entirely  new  freedom  in  his  **  national 
birthright  of  outspokenness/'  This  outspoken- 
ness degenerated,  in  Mr.  Waugh's  opinion,  into 
mere  licence — a  licence  in  poetry  the  effects  of 
which,  it  seems  to  me,  can  be  seen  at  the  pre- 
sent day  in  our  sexual  novels  and  problem 
plays.  ''  The  age  of  brutality  pure  and  simple 
is  dead  with  us,  it  is  true,'*  says  Mr.  Waugh, 
*'  but  the  age  of  effeniinacy  appears,  if  one  is  to 
judge  by  recent  evidence,  to  be  growing  to  its 
dawn.  The  day  that  follows  will,  if  it  fulfils 
the  promise  of  its  morning,  be  very  serious  and 
very  detrimental  to  the  future  of  our  literature.*' 
We  cannot,  unfortunately,  doubt  that  this 
prophecy  has  come  very  near  to  realisation. 
The  degenerate  poetry  of  the  period  with  which 
Mr.  Waugh  is  concerned  certainly  influenced 
other  branches  of  literature.  The  great  mass 
of  the  people  could  not  be  reached  by  poetical 
works,  but  they  could  be  reached  and  were 
ultimately  reached  by  novels,  which  in  their  own 
way  are  even  more  degenerate.  The  modern 
novel  does  not  appear  to  be  complete  without 
a  sex  problem :  not  as  if  sex  were  considered 
from  a  strictly  scientific  or  psychological  point 

lOI 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

of  view,  not  as  if  the  subject  were  treated  as 
Goethe  treated  it  so  well  in  the  Elective  Affinities, 
but  in  a  crude,  ultra-realistic  fashion.  The 
average  novel  published  in  England  at  present 
simply  contains  all  the  nastiness  of  the  average 
French  novel  without  its  delicacy  of  style  and 
finesse  of  treatment. 

Mr.  Waugh's  criticism  of  Swinburne  from 
this  standpoint  of  reticence  is  quite  sound. 
It  is  true,  as  he  states,  that  Swinburne  brought 
us  no  new  message,  no  philosophy,  no  new 
vision  of  life,  no  criticism  of  contemporary 
existence.  *'  There  remains  the  melody  alone  ; 
and  this,  when  once  it  is  surpassed,  will  charm 
us  little  enough.  We  shall  forget  it  then.  Art 
brings  its  revenges,  and  this  will  be  one  of  them." 

Is  not  this  statement  already  proving  true  ? 
Seldom  has  Swinburne's  unrestrained  melody 
been  so  calmly  and  definitely  dealt  with.  Let 
me  conclude  this  reference  to  Mr.  Waugh  with 
one  more  quotation  from  his  essay.  He  is 
speaking  of  the  developments  of  realism  and 
he  sums  them  up  excellently  : 

The  two  developments  of  realism  of  which  we  have 
been  speaking  seem  to  me  to  typify  the  two  excesses 
into  which  frankness  is  inclined  to  fall ;  on  the  one 
hand,  the  excess  prompted  by  effeminacy — that  is  to 
say,  by  the  want  of  restraint  which  starts  from  ener- 

102 


THE  *^ YELLOW  BOOK"  SCHOOL 

vated  sensation  ;  and,  on  the  other,  the  excess  which 
results  from  a  certain  brutal  virility,  which  proceeds 
from  coarse  familiarity  with  indulgence.  The  one 
whispers,  the  other  shouts  ;  the  one  is  the  language 
of  the  courtesan,  the  other  of  the  bargee.  What  we 
miss  in  both  alike  is  that  true  frankness  which  springs 
from  the  artistic  and  moral  temperament.  .  .  .  How 
is  art  served  by  all  this  ?  .  .  .  Our  poets,  who  know 
no  rhyme  for  *'  rest "  except  that  **  breast  "  whose 
snowinesses  and  softnesses  they  are  for  ever  describing 
with  every  accent  of  indulgence,  whose  eyes  are  all 
for  frills,  if  not  for  garters,  what  have  they  sung 
that  was  not  sung  with  far  greater  beauty  and  sincerity 
in  the  days  when  frills  and  garters  were  alluded  to 
with  the  open  frankness  that  cried  shame  on  him  who 
evil  thought  ? 

Mr.  Waugh  might  have  added  that  this  state 
of  things  arose  from  the  misdirected  Puritanism 
of  the  Victorian  era,  which  was  unable  to 
distinguish  between  immodesty  and  immorality. 
In  England  above  all  countries  it  is  difficult  to 
compile  moral  statistics  ;  but  it  may  safely 
be  said  that  there  was  no  more  immorality  in 
the  Elizabethan  period,  when  speech  was  frank, 
than  in  the  Victorian  era,  when  speech  was 
hypocritical.  To  the  man  of  the  world  it 
will  sound  a  truism  to  say  that  we  do  not  get 
rid  of  vice  by  driving  it  out  of  sight,  but  to 
the  Puritan  fanatic  this  remark  still  sounds 
as  paradoxical  as  one  of  Wilde's  epigrams. 

103 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

With  this  essay  of  Mr.  Waugh's  one  should 
not  forget  to  compare  an  essay  by  Hubert 
Crackanthorpe  with  a  similar  title,  which  ap- 
peared in  Volume  II  of  The  Yellow  Book. 
Crackanthorpe  pointed  out,  justly  enough,  that 
*'  the  truth  is,  and,  despite  Mr.  Waugh,  we  are 
near  recognition  of  it,  that  nowadays  there  is 
but  scanty  merit  in  the  mere  selection  of  any 
particular  subject,  however  ingenious  or  daring 
it  may  appear  at  first  sight  ;  that  a  man  is 
not  an  artist  simply  because  he  writes  about 
heredity  or  the  demi-monde ;  that  to  call  a  spade 
a  spade  requires  no  extraordinary  literary  gift ; 
and  that  the  essential  is  contained  in  the  frank, 
fearless  acceptance  by  every  man  of  his  artistic 
temperament  with  its  qualities  and  its  flaws.'* 

In  saying  this  Crackanthorpe  was  not  right 
in  one  respect.  We  have  not  yet  fully  recog- 
nised this  truth ;  for  many  modern  writers  do 
appear  to  be  thought  artists  simply  because 
they  are  daring  enough  to  call  a  spade  a  spade 
and  to  write  about  the  demi-monde.  Many  of 
our  modern  authors,  however,  do  not  even  write 
about  the  demi-monde  ;  they  content  themselves 
with  the  sexual  affairs  of  women  who  have  no 
right  to  be  included  in  this  category.  There  is 
a  French  saying,  '*  Qui  connait  le  demi-monde, 

104 


THE  *^ YELLOW  BOOK"  SCHOOL 

connait  tout  le  monde/*     Our  modern  writers 
are  in  most  cases  acquainted  with  neither. 

Among  the  earlier  reputations  secured  on 
The  Yellow  Book  perhaps  the  most  important 
was  that  of  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm.  His  Defence 
of  Cosmetics  met  with  the  cordial  disapproval  of 
the  critics,  which  gave  the  author  the  oppor- 
tunity of  putting  a  pungent  reply  in  No.  2  in 
the  form  of  a  letter  to  the  editor.  Further 
ire  seems  to  have  been  aroused  among  the  philis- 
tines,  and  very  naturally,  by  a  sentence  in  this 
letter  :  *'  Personally  I  cannot  conceive  how  any 
artist  can  be  hurt  by  remarks  dropped  from 
a  garret  into  a  gutter,  yet  it  is  incontestable 
that  many  illustrious  artists  have  so  been  hurt.'' 
After  this  Mr.  Beerbohm  proceeds  to  trounce  his 
enemies  in  his  usual  style,  but  it  is  to  be  feared 
that  the  dead  weight  of  philistine  stupidity  has 
since  proved  too  much  even  for  his  razor-like 
wit.  We  must  not  forget,  too,  Mr.  Beerbohm's 
caricature  of  George  IV  in  No.  3  of  The  Yellow 
Book,  and  the  characteristic  article  accom- 
panying the  drawing ;  but  there  is  another 
essay  of  his  of  even  greater  value  and  interest 
in  No.  4,  an  essay  which  is  only  second  in 
brilliancy  to  the  Defence  of  Cosmetics.  This 
essay  is  entitled  ''  1880,''  and  in  it  the  writer 

105 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

speaks  of  the  remoteness  of  the  period  and 
the  difficulty  of  obtaining  information  in  regard 
to  it.  It  is  in  this  essay  that  Mr.  Beerbohm 
refers  to  Wilde  as  having  discovered  beauty, 
but  there  is  a  much  more  mordant  passage, 
and  one  which  could  certainly  not  be  paralleled 
in  any  of  our  present-day  publications. 

The  period  of  1880  and  of  the  few  years  immediately 
succeeding  it  must  always  be  memorable  to  us,  for  it 
marks  a  great  change  in  the  constitution  of  Society. 
It  would  seem  that  during  the  five  or  six  years  which 
preceded  it,  the  **  upper  ten  thousand,"  as  they  were 
somewhat  quaintly  called  by  the  journalists  of  the 
day,  had  taken  a  somewhat  more  frigid  tone.  The 
Prince  of  Wales  had  inclined  for  a  time  to  be  more 
restful  after  the  ravages  of  his  youth.  The  continued 
seclusion  of  Queen  Victoria,  who  during  these  years 
was  engaged  upon  that  superb  work  of  introspection 
and  analysis.  More  Leaves  from  the  Highlands,  had 
begun  to  tell  upon  the  social  system. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more  delightful 
bit  of  satire.  To  match  it,  indeed,  one  would 
have  to  go  to  France,  and  I  do  not  think  that 
any  higher  compliment  can  be  paid  to  Mr. 
Beerbohm  than  this. 

Many  of  those  who  have  read  Mr.   Lionel 

Johnson's  very  sound  book  on  the  art  of  Thomas 

Hardy  may  not  perhaps  be  aware  that  he  was 

another  writer   who  belonged    to    The    Yellow 

106 


THE   ^'YELLOW   BOOK"   SCHOOL 

Book  set,  and  through  The  Yellow  Book  and 
the  other  writers  associated  with  it  he  made  a 
considerable  name  before  his  premature  death. 
One  of  the  best  essays  he  wrote  in  the  nineties 
was  a  contribution  to  No.  3  of  The  Yellow 
Book,  entitled  Tobacco  Clouds : 

Tobacco  Clouds  :  cloud  upon  cloud  :  and  if  I  were 
to  think  that  an  image  of  life  can  he  in  wreathing 
blue  tobacco-smoke,  pleasant  were  the  life  so  fancied. 
Its  fair  changes  in  air,  its  gentle  motions,  its  quiet 
dying  out  and  away  at  last,  should  symbolise  some- 
thing more  than  perfect  idleness.  Cloud  upon  cloud  : 
and  I  will  think  as  I  have  said  :  it  is  amusing  to 
think  so. 

It  is  that  death  out  and  away  upon  the  air  which 
charms  me  :  charms  more  than  the  manner  of  the 
blown  red  rose,  full  after  dew  at  morning,  upon  the 
grass  at  sunset.  The  clouds'  end,  their  death  in  air, 
fills  me  with  the  very  beauty  of  desire ;  it  has  no 
violence  in  it,  and  it  is  almost  invisible.  Think  of  it ! 
While  the  cloud  lived  it  was  seemly  and  various  ; 
and  with  a  graceful  change  it  passed  away  :  the  image 
of  a  reasonable  life  is  there,  hanging  among  tobacco 
clouds.  An  image  and  a  test:  an  image,  because 
elaborated  by  fancy :  a  true  and  appalling  image,  and 
so,  to  my  present  way  of  life,  a  test.  .  .  . 

Call  me,  my  dear  friend,  what  reproachful  name 
you  please,  but  by  your  leave  the  world  is  better  for 
my  cheerfulness.  True,  should  the  terrible  issues 
come  upon  me,  demanding  high  courage  and  finding 
but  good  temper,  then  give  me  your  prayers,  for  I 
have  my  misdoubts.  Till  then  let  me  cultivate  my 
place  in  life,  nurturing  its  comelier  flowers;  taking 
the  little  things  of  time  with  a  grateful  relish  and  a 

107 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

mind  at  rest.  So  hours  and  years  pass  into  hours  and 
years,  gently,  and  surely,  and  orderly ;  as  these 
clouds,  grey  and  blue  clouds,  of  tobacco  smoke  pass 
up  to  the  air  and  away  upon  the  wind  ;  incense  of  a 
goodly  savour,  cheering  the  thoughts  of  my  heart 
before  passing  away,  to  disappear  at  last. 

There  is  certainly  a  very  peculiar  charm  in 
this  writing.  One  thinks  in  vain  of  any  other 
modern  English  author  with  whom  Lionel 
Johnson  can  adequately  be  compared.  He 
seeks  sentences  as  Pater  sought  words.  In 
Pater's  case,  however,  the  sentences  became 
collections  of  mosaic  and  the  joinings  are  in 
many  cases  only  too  clearly  visible.  In  Lionel 
Johnson's  work  this  is  not  so.  As  readers  of 
his  book  on  Thomas  Hardy  will  remember,  he 
unites  sound  critical  ideas  to  a  harmonious  and 
well-polished  style  ;  even  though  in  this  one 
great  critical  work  of  his  he  was  inclined  to  be 
over-elaborate  in  the  matter  of  references  and 
names.  That  Lionel  Johnson  should  have 
given  way  to  drink  and  died  in  his  early  thirties 
is  but  one  of  the  tragedies  of  this  literary  period. 

It  is,  I  am  sure,  difficult  for  any  one  who  reads 
The  Yellow  Book  to  fail  to  be  impressed  by 
John  Davidson's  poem  Thirty  Boh  a  Week, 
contributed  to  No.  2.  The  concluding  final 
verse  of  one  stanza  is  one  of  his  happiest  efforts  : 

108 


THE  "YELLOW  BOOK"  SCHOOL 

But  you'll  never  hear  her  do  a  growl,  or  whine. 
For  she's  made  of  flint  and  roses  very  odd  ; 
And  I've  got  to  cut  my  meaning  rather  fine 
Or  I'd  blubber,  for  I'm  made  of  greens  and  sod  : 
So  p'raps  we  are  in  hell  for  all  that  I  can  tell, 
And  lost  and  damned  and  served  up  hot  to  God. 

Amongst  various  miscellaneous  articles  and 
stories  contributed  to  The  Yellow  Book  must  be 
mentioned  Harland's  Rosemary  for  Remem- 
brance, in  No.  5.  The  pathetic  story  of  the 
little  Italian  girl  is  told  almost  without  an 
artistic  flaw.  In  No.  4  there  is  an  excellent 
article  on  Stendhal,  by  Norman  Hapgood. 
The  Foolish  Virgin,  in  No.  8,  is  a  very  fair 
specimen  of  Gissing,  and  there  are  several 
contributions  of  course  by  Ella  d'Arcy.  It 
may  seem  not  a  little  amusing  to  us  at  the 
present  day  to  think  that  Austin  Dobson,  Dolf 
Wyllarde,  and  Vernon  Lee  appeared  between 
the  same  covers  as  Max  Beerbohm,  Henry 
Harland,  and  Ernest  Dowson. 

In  the  artistic  section  there  was  much  work, 
good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  by  various  artists, 
well  known  and  otherwise — ^Walter  Crane, 
Muirhead  Bone,  E.  J.  Sullivan,  Walter  Sickert, 
and  Patten  Wilson,  to  take  a  few  names  at  a 
venture.  But  Beardsley,  of  course,  dominated 
them  all.     Perhaps  his  most  characteristic  draw- 

109 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

ing  in  The  Yellow  Book  series  is  the  portrait  of 
himself  in  No.  3. 

No.  13,  the  last  issue  of  The  Yellow  Book, 
presents  a  strange  and  rather  sudden  contrast 
to  No.  I.  There  is  nothing  in  the  final  volume 
which  can  excite  any  particular  feeling  of 
enthusiasm  in  the  critic.  There  is  a  somewhat 
laboured  paper  on  Moliere,  by  J.  M.  Robertson  ; 
but  neither  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats  nor  Mr.  le  Gallienne 
is  in  particularly  good  form.  We  have  passed, 
too,  from  characteristic  drawings  by  Beardsley 
to  such  sentimental  studies  as  E.  S.  Harper's 
**The  Missing  Boat  in  Sight "  or  Mr.  Housman's 
"  Barren  Love."  None  of  the  artistic  efforts  in 
the  latter  issues  of  The  Yellow  Book  can  be  com- 
pared with  such  typical  studies  by  Beardsley  as 

"The  Repentance  of  Mrs.  ,"  in  No.  4,  or 

his  *'  Wagnerites  '*  in  No.  3.  In  the  last  volume 
in  particular  there  is  nothing  distinctive  either 
in  the  literary  or  the  artistic  section  ;  we  find 
nothing  in  it  that  calls  for  any  special  comment, 
and  we  would  willingly  give  the  combined 
efforts  of  the  nine  artists  whose  names  appear 
on  the  title-page  for  any  one  of  Beardsley's 
worst  drawings. 

Of  all  those  writers  who  made  their  reputa- 
tions or  became  chiefly  known  through  their 

no 


THE  *^ YELLOW  BOOK"  SCHOOL 

connection  with  The  Yellow  Book,  probably  the 
most  important  were  Arthur  Symons,  Ernest 
Dowson,  and  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm.  It  has  been 
rightly  said  by  Mr.  Blaikie  Murdoch  that  the 
mantle  of  Pater  fell  upon  Mr.  Symons  rather  than 
on  any  one  else,  and  we  see  the  result  no  doubt  in 
Mr.  Symons's  prose  style,  which  is  full  of  Pater's 
subtlety.  This  remark  applies,  at  all  events, 
to  Mr.  Symons' s  critical  and  interpretative 
essays — Cities,  for  example,  or  the  Studies  in 
Prose  and  Verse  ;  but  when  occasion  arose  he 
could  also  write  with  a  vigour  which  would 
probably  have  made  Pater  very  uneasy.  Look 
at  the  editorial  note  to  the  second  number  of 
The  Savoy  : 

In  presenting  to  the  public  the  second  number  of 
The  Savoy,  I  wish  to  thank  the  critics  of  the  press 
for  the  flattering  reception  which  they  have  given  to 
No.  I.  That  reception  has  been  none  the  less  flattering 
because  it  has  been  for  the  most  part  unfavourable. 
Any  new  endeavour  lends  itself  alike  by  its  merits 
and  by  its  defects  to  the  disapproval  of  the  larger 
number  of  people,  and  it  is  always  possible  to  learn 
from  any  vigorously  expressed  denunciation,  not 
perhaps  what  the  utterer  intended  should  be  learned. 
I  confess  cheerfully  that  I  have  learned  much  from 
the  newspaper  criticisms  of  the  first  number  of  The 
Savoy.  It  is  with  confidence  that  I  anticipate  no 
less  instruction  from  the  criticisms  which  I  shall  have 
the  pleasure  of  reading  on  the  number  now  issued. 

Ill 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

This  is  sufficiently  direct  and  to  the  point,  and 
it  says  much  for  Mr.  Symons's  versatility  that 
he  was  at  the  same  time  capable  of  seeking  his 
poetical  subjects  in  the  moods  of  men,  to  use 
his  own  words,  and  of  rendering  them  with  such 
fidelity  and  subtlety  in  his  poems.  Take  for  ex- 
ample the  piece  entitled  On  the  Stage  in  London 
Nights  : 

Lights,  in  a  multi-coloured  mist, 

From  indigo  to  amethyst, 

A  whirling  mist  of  multi-coloured  lights ; 

And  after,  wigs  and  tights, 

Then  faces,  then  a  glimpse  of  profiles,  then 

Eyes,  and  a  mist  again  ; 

And  rouge,  and  always  tights,  and  wigs  and  tights. 

You  see  the  ballet  so,  and  so 

From  amethyst  to  indigo. 

You  see  a  dance  of  phantoms,  but  I  see 

A  girl,  who  smiles  to  me  ; 

Her  cheeks,  across  the  rouge,  and  in  her  eyes 

I  know  what  memories. 

What  memories  and  messages  for  me. 

There  is  undoubted  subtlety  in  this:  "a 
gem-like  flame  '*  of  real  poetry  cast  for  an  in- 
stant on  the  stage.  And  for  the  equally  subtle 
interpretation  of  another  scene  and  mood,  what 
could  be  better  than  Autumn  Twilight  ? 

The  long  September  evening  dies 
In  mist  along  the  fields  and  lanes  ; 
Only  a  few  faint  stars  surprise 
The  lingering  twilight  as  it  wanes. 

112 


THE   "YELLOW   BOOK"   SCHOOL 

Night  creeps  across  the  darkening  vale  ; 
On  the  horizon  tree  by  tree 
Fades  into  shadowy  skies  as  pale 
As  moonlight  on  a  shadowy  sea. 

And,  down  the  mist-enfolded  lanes. 
Grown  pensive  now  with  evening, 
See,  lingering  as  the  twilight  wanes. 
Lover  with  lover  wandering. 

Possibly,  however,  Mr.  Symons  is  particu- 
larly happy  in  dealing  with  night  in  Venice. 
There  is  an  excellent  little  cameo  beginning 
'*  Night,  and  the  silence  of  the  night,  In  Venice  ; 
far  away  a  song  ''  ;  but  as  an  example  of  pure 
subtlety  and  beauty  I  will  quote  Veneta  Marina : 

The  mists  rise  white  to  the  stars, 
White  on  the  night  of  the  sky, 
Out  of  the  waters'  night. 
And  the  stars  lean  down  to  them  white. 
Ah  !   how  the  stars  seem  nigh  ; 
How  far  away  are  the  stars  ! 

And  I  too  under  the  stars. 
Alone  with  the  night  again. 
And  the  waters'  monotone  ; 
I  and  the  night  alone, 
And  the  world  and  the  ways  of  men 
Farther  from  me  than  the  stars. 

Moods  are  innumerable,  yet,  in  reading  over 

Mr.  Symons's  work  we  feel  that  he  has  touched 

upon  them  all.     I  must  quote  one  more  example 

of  his  manner  :  those  four  lines  which  open  the 

8  113 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

poem  entitled  New  Yearns  Eve,  in  No.  2  of  The 
Savoy : 

We  heard  the  bells  of  midnight  burying  the  year. 

Then  the  night  poured  its  silent  waters  over  us. 

And  then  in  the  vague  darkness,  faint  and  tremulous. 
Time  paused  ;    then  the  night  filled  with  sound  ;    morning 
was  here. 

It  is  not  possible  within  the  space  of  a  few 
pages  to  do  justice  to  Mr.  Symons's  prose  work. 
I  have  already  referred  to  his  debt  to  Pater, 
and  this  is  a  debt  which  Mr.  Symons  himself 
did  not  overlook  when  he  wrote  a  glowing 
account  of  his  work  for  the  last  number  of  The 
Savoy.  Mr.  Symons's  view  of  Pater  is  opposed 
to  mine,  for  he  appears  to  be  favourable  to  a 
type  of  literature  and  thought  which  a  classicist 
does  not  easily  tolerate.  I  am  bound  to  admit, 
however,  that  within  the  limits  of  his  roman- 
ticism, which  Mr.  Symons  holds  well  in  check, 
he  has  written  one  of  the  best  criticisms  on 
Pater  ever  penned  :  and  with  this  admission 
let  us  hope  that  room  will  be  found  for  the 
views  of  both  of  us  in  the  domain  of  critical 
interpretation.  Referring  to  Marius,  Mr. 
Symons  says : 

In  this  book,  and  in  the  Imaginary  Portraits  of  three 
years  later — which  seems  to  me  to  show  his  imagina- 
tive and  artistic  faculties  at  their  point  of  most  perfect 

114 


THE  "YELLOW  BOOK"  SCHOOL 

fusion — Pater  has  not  endeavoured  to  create  characters, 
in  whom  the  flesh  and  blood  should  seem  to  be  that  of 
life  itself ;  he  had  not  the  energy  of  creation,  and  he 
was  content  with  a  more  shadowy  life  than  theirs  for 
the  children  of  his  dreams.  What  he  has  done  is  to  give 
a  concrete  form  to  abstract  ideas  ;  to  represent  certain 
types  of  character,  to  trace  certain  developments,  in 
the  picturesque  form  of  narrative  ;  to  which,  indeed, 
the  term  portrait  is  very  happily  applied  ;  for  the 
method  is  that  of  a  very  patient  and  elaborate  brush- 
work,  in  which  the  touches  which  go  to  form  the 
likeness  are  so  fine  that  it  is  difficult  to  see  quite 
their  individual  value,  until,  the  end  being  reached, 
the  whole  picture  starts  out  before  you.  Each,  with 
perhaps  one  exception,  is  the  study  of  a  soul,  or  rather 
of  a  consciousness  ;  such  a  study  as  might  be  made 
by  simply  looking  within,  and  projecting  now  this 
now  that  side  of  oneself  on  an  exterior  plane.  I  do 
not  mean  to  say  that  I  attribute  to  Pater  himself  the 
philosophical  theories  of  Sebastian  van  Storck,  or 
the  artistic  ideals  of  Duke  Carl  of  Rosenmold.  I 
mean  that  the  attitude  of  mind,  the  outlook,  in  the 
most  general  sense,  is  always  limited  and  directed 
in  a  certain  way,  giving  one  always  the  picture  of  a 
delicate,  subtle,  aspiring,  unsatisfied  personality,  open 
to  all  impressions,  living  chiefly  by  sensations,  little 
anxious  to  reap  any  of  the  rich  harvest  of  its  intangible 
but  keenly  possessed  gains  ;  a  personality  withdrawn 
from  action,  which  it  despises  or  dreads,  solitary  with 
its  ideals,  in  the  circle  of  its  "  exquisite  moments  "  in 
the  Palace  of  Art,  where  it  is  never  quite  at  rest. 

Once  more  I  emphasise  the  fact  that  Mr. 
Symons^s  criticism  of  Pater  would  hardly  be 
upheld  by  modern  Continental  standards.    This, 

115 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

I  hope,  will  not  prevent  the  modern  critic  from 
doing  justice  to  the  undeniably  literary  qualities 
of  his  prose. 

Like  all  poets,  Mr.  Symons  could  not  write 
without  shocking  somebody,  and  it  was  not 
long  before  he  was  belaboured  by  the  middle- 
class  mind  of  his  day  ;  but  he  made  a  fine 
reply  to  his  critics  in  the  preface  to  the  second 
edition  of  London  Nights  :  a  reply  which  is  of 
permanent  value  and  not  merely  applicable  to 
one  particular  period  or  phase  of  literature  in 
the  world's  history.  I  refer  more  particularly 
to  the  following  passage  : 

I  have  been  attacked  on  the  grounds  of  morality, 
and  by  people  who,  in  condemning  my  book,  not 
because  it  is  bad  art,  but  because  they  think  it  bad 
morality,  forget  that  they  are  confusing  moral  and 
artistic  judgments  and  limiting  art  without  aiding 
morality.  I  contend  on  behalf  of  the  liberty  of  art, 
and  I  deny  that  morals  have  any  right  of  jurisdiction 
over  it.  Art  may  be  served  by  morality,  it  can  never 
be  its  servant.  For  the  principles  of  art  are  eternal, 
while  the  principles  of  morality  fluctuate  with  the 
ebb  and  flow  of  the  ages. 

Generally  speaking  it  hardly  seems  to  me 
that  Mr.  Symons's  work  has  improved  since 
the  Savoy  period  ;  rather  the  contrary.  He  is 
in  a  different  category  from  Mr.  Austin  Dobson 
or  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse,  but  like  them  he  would 

ii6 


THE   '^ YELLOW   BOOK"   SCHOOL 

appear  to  have  lost  much  of  the  freshness  and 
keenness  of  insight  which  distinguished  his 
eadier  work.  One  important  exception,  how- 
ever, must  be  made  :  the  book  on  William 
Blake  is  one  of  the  finest  pieces  of  critical 
writing  in  recent  years.  It  will,  I  hope,  be 
taken  as  a  compliment  when  I  say  that  I  can 
compare  it  only  to  Lionel  Johnson's  book  on 
the  art  of  Thomas  Hardy. 

Another  of  The  Yellow  Book  band  was  Hubert 
Crackanthorpe,  to  whose  work  justice  has  not 
yet  been  done.  His  work,  in  fact,  is  not  very 
generally  known  even  in  literary  circles,  and  it 
has  in  consequence  been  less  discussed  than  its 
merits  deserve.  Crackanthorpe  died  young ; 
and  Mr.  Henry  James,  in  his  introduction  to 
the  Last  Studies,  tells  us  that  the  young  writer 
was  *'  so  fond  of  movement  and  sport,  of  the 
open  air  of  life  and  of  the  idea  of  immediate, 
easy,  '  healthy '  adventure,  that  his  natural 
vocation  might  have  seemed  rather  a  long  ride 
away  into  a  world  of  exhilarating  exposure, 
of  merely  material  romance."  The  very  oppo- 
site qualities  are  seen  in  Crackanthorpe's  work. 
He  has  a  piercing  eye  for  the  cruel  side  of  life, 
the  cruel  aspects  of  everyday  events.  He  is 
frankly  a  disciple  of  Guy  de  Maupassant ;   and 

117 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

he  has  certainly  shown  the  influence  of  the 
French  author  in  his  style.  A  few  suggestive 
sentences,  and  his  characters  are  put  before  us. 
More  than  that :  their  very  souls  are  laid  bare  ; 
his  men  and  women  stand  in  front  of  us  naked, 
raw.  It  is  realism,  but  realism  of  a  high  order. 
No  ordinary  writer  could  do  it.  Aunt  Lisbet 
never  appears  on  the  scene  in  person  ;  but  we 
know  her  through  and  through,  nevertheless. 
In  a  few  pages  we  know  why  a  girl  like  Lilly 
would  naturally  fall  in  love  with  a  man  like 
Maurice  Radford  ;  and  we  know,  too,  why  she 
would  equally  naturally  give  up  Maurice  for 
Adrian  Safford.  And  then  those  few  pregnant 
pages  in  which  her  downfall  is  traced — con- 
cisely, clearly,  firmly,  without  a  note  of  senti- 
mentality, without  a  note  of  pity,  without  a 
word  of  justification  or  condemnation  ! 

Or,  again,  Rosa  Blencarn,  Anthony  Garstin's 
mother,  and  Anthony  Garstin  himself  :  what 
an  untoward  ending  to  a  courtship,  what  a 
dramatic  scene  with  the  girl  on  the  rocky  slope, 
and  what  a  harrowing  scene  with  the  mother 
to  finish  the  story  !  And  Oswald  and  Letty  in 
the  short  sketch  A  Conflict  of  Egoisms — Vivian 
Marston — Frank  Gorridge  and  his  wife  :  they 
are   all  distinctive  diaracters ;    they  are  de- 

ii8 


THE   '^YELLOW   BOOK"   SCHOOL 

picted  on  paper  with  a  literary  skill  which  is 
astounding  in  so  young  a  writer.  But  they  have 
the  fatal  defect  of  ugliness ;  they  degrade  life. 

A  classicist  will  object  to  art  for  art's  sake. 
He  will  equally  object  to  realism  for  realism's 
sake.  Both  art  and  realism  must  serve  life. 
Any  artist  who  makes  use  of  art  and  realism  for 
this  end  has  justified  their  existence  and  his 
own.  The  Wilde  school,  seeing  art  apart  from 
life,  cannot  meet  with  our  approval ;  but 
neither  can  the  sordid  ugliness  of  Crackan- 
thorpe's  sketches,  despite  their  fine  literary 
presentation.  They  do  not  elevate  the  type 
man ;  they  degrade  it.  Wilde's  propaganda 
in  behalf  of  beauty  is  at  the  opposite  extreme 
to  Crackanthorpe's  movement  in  behalf  of 
ugliness.  It  is  impossible  for  any  classicist  to 
rise  from  a  perusal  of  Sentimental  Studies^ 
Wreckage,  or  the  Last  Studies  without  a  feeling 
of  physical  and  mental  repugnance  towards 
the  events  portrayed  in  them  and  towards  the 
characters  who  move  across  the  pages.  We 
are  in  the  midst  of  a  miasma  ;  or  rather  we 
are  under  the  influence  of  a  drug  that  dulls  our 
senses  to  the  extent  of  preventing  us  from 
distinguishing  between  beauty  and  its  contrary. 
At  the  same  time  we  are  fascinated  by  Crackan- 

119 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

thorpe's  style.  It  is  French.  It  is  Maupassant 
speaking  to  us  in  our  own  language  ;  but  it  is 
the  sordid,  bleak  Maupassant.  We  may  adapt 
Wilde's  phrase  and  say  that  we  see  the  verities 
dancing  on  the  tight-rope  in  Crackanthorpe's 
works  ;  but  we  have  an  uneasy  feeling  that  we, 
too,  are  dancing  on  the  tight-rope,  our  nerves 
strained  to  the  highest  pitch. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  one  or  two  exceptions. 
In  Vignettes,  for  example,  the  characters  do 
not,  to  use  an  excellent  phrase  of  Mr.  Wells, 
crawl  along  drain-pipes  till  they  die.  But  they 
are  often  inartistic,  like  *'  our  lady  of  the  Lane  '' : 

Whenever  the  London  sun  touches  the  small, 
dusky  shops  with  a  jumble  of  begrimed  colour — the 
old  gold  and  scarlet  of  hanging  meat ;  the  metallic 
green  of  mature  cabbages  ;  the  wavering  russet  of 
piled  potatoes  ;  the  sharp  white  of  fly-bills,  pasted 
all  awry — then  the  moment  to  see  her  is  come.  You 
will  find  her,  bareheaded  and  touzled  ;  her  dingy, 
peaked  shawl  hanging  down  her  back,  and  in  front 
the  bellying  expanse  of  her  soiled  apron  ;  blocking 
the  pavement ;  established  by  her  own  corner  of  the 
Lane,  all  littered  with  the  cries  of  children,  and  the 
fitful  throbbing  of  the  asphalte  beneath  the  hollow 
hammering  of  hoofs. 

She  always  carries  a  baby  by  her  breast ;  her  bare 
forearms  are  as  bulky  as  any  man's  ;  in  her  eyes  is  a 
fro  ward  scowl ;  and,  when  she  laughs,  it  is  with  a 
harsh,  strident  gaiety.  But  she  never  fails  to  wear 
her   squalid   portliness   with   a   robust   and   defiant 

X20 


THE   ^^ YELLOW   BOOK"   SCHOOL 

dignity,  that  makes  her  figure  definitely  symbolic  of 
Cockney  maternity. 

But  Paris  in  October  is  better  than  this  : 

Paris  in  October — all  white  and  a-glitter  under  a 
cold,  sparkling  sky,  and  the  trees  of  the  boulevards 
trembling  their  frail,  russet  leaves  ;  garish,  petulant 
Paris ;  complacently  content  with  her  sauntering 
crowds,  her  monotonous  arrangements  in  pink  and 
white  and  blue  ;  ever  busied  with  her  own  publicity, 
her  tiresome,  obvious  vice,  and  her  parochial  modernity 
coquetting  with  cosmopolitanism.  ... 

The  four  dots  have  meaning  ;  and  how  well 
is  the  Paris  of  our  days  summed  up  in  that  last 
phrase  :  "  parochial  modernity  coquetting  with 
cosmopolitanism ''  !  And  then  think  what  a 
scene  is  summed  up  in  these  few  lines  : 

It  was  a  little  street,  shabbily  symmetrical — a 
double  row  of  insignificant,  dingy-brick  houses. 
Muffled  in  the  dusk  of  the  fading  winter  afternoon,  it 
seemed  sunk  in  squalid  listless  slumber.  In  the  distance 
a  church-bell  was  tolling  its  joyless  mechanical  Sunday 
tale. 

A  man  stood  in  the  roadway,  droning  the  words 
of  a  hymn- tune.  He  was  old  and  decayed  and  slut- 
tish ;  he  wore  an  ancient,  baggy  frock-coat,  and, 
through  the  cracks  in  his  boots  you  could  see  the 
red  flesh  of  his  feet.  His  gait  was  starved  and  timid  : 
the  touch  of  the  air  was  very  bitter.  And  when  he 
had  finished  his  singing,  he  remained  gazing  up  at 
the  rows  of  lifeless  windows,  with  a  look  of  dull  ex- 
pectancy in  his  bloodshot,  watery  eyes. 

121 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

In  work  like  this  Crackanthorpe  was  perfect ; 
and  one  wishes  that  he  had  left  more  books  of 
the  Vignettes  than  of  the  Wreckage  type.  For 
many  of  the  vignettes  are  beautiful,  and  ugliness 
cannot,  from  the  artistic  point  of  view,  be 
tolerated.  And  if  there  are  beautiful  subjects 
to  choose  from  there  is  no  special  reason  why 
an  artist  of  Crackanthorpe's  qualifications 
should  deliberately  choose  ugly  ones.  Even 
when  writing  about  Naples  he  does  not  forget 
to  remind  us  of  the  garbage  in  the  Strada  del 
Porto  and  the  squalidness  of  the  Strada  del 
Chiaia  ;  though  he  atones  for  this  in  one  of 
the  best  vignettes  he  ever  wrote,  From  Posilipo  : 

Heaped  beneath  us  all  Naples,  white  and  motionless 
in  the  silent  blaze  of  the  midday  sun ;  circling  the 
bay,  still  and  smooth  and  blue  as  the  sky  above,  a 
misty  line  of  white  villages  ;  dark,  velvety  shadows 
draping  the  hills  ;  on  the  horizon,  rising  abruptly, 
Capri's  notched  silhouette — tout  semble  suer  la  beaute 
— la  bonne  et  franche  beaute  criarde  des  pays  chauds 
europ6ens. 

Naples  at  noon  is  a  splendid  artistic  subject, 
and  Crackanthorpe  has  here  done  justice  to  it 
in  his  own  fashion.  But  as  a  general  rule  he 
preferred  to  describe  the  cruelty  of  things. 
The  Vignettes  are,  as  a  whole,  excellent.  In  his 
other  books,  however,  we  lie  motionless,  and 

122 


THE  ^^ YELLOW  BOOK"  SCHOOL 

without    an  anaesthetic,   while  the  firm   hand 
of  the  literary  surgeon  dissects  our  very  soul. 

I  have  already  referred  to  Max  Beerbohm  in 
connection  with  The  Yellow  Book,  quoting  a 
specimen  or  two  of  his  writing.  His  admirers 
will  naturally  set  more  store  by  his  earlier  works 
than  by  such  a  book  as  Zuleika  Dobson.  It  is 
almost  impossible  to  imagine  that  this  latter 
book  was  written  by  the  brilliant  author  of 
The  Defence  of  Cosmetics  and  ''  1880/'  I  do  not 
think  that  Mr.  Beerbohm  should  have  attempted 
a  long  novel ;  his  strength  lies  rather  in  the 
short  sketches  such  as  we  find  collected  from 
various  periodicals  in  such  volumes  as  The  Works 
of  Max  Beerbohm,  More,  and  Yet  Again.  His 
theatrical  criticisms  for  The  Saturday  Review, 
again,  did  not  show^  him  at  his  best.  Unlike 
Shaw,  he  left  behind  him  no  particular  tradi- 
tion. But  where  he  finds  a  subject  to  suit  his 
pen  he  is  admirable  and  altogether  distinctive — 
not  distinctive  in  the  sense  in  which  we  speak  of 
Crackanthorpe  or  Wilde  as  distinctive  ;  but  dis- 
tinctive as  a  result  of  the  frank  humour  which 
enters  into  his  style  and  comes  upon  us  at 
unexpected  places — not  wittiness,  as  in  the  case 
of  Whistler ;  not  paradoxes,  as  in  the  case  of 
Wilde  :    but  simply  humour. 

123 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

The  essay  on  The  House  of  Commons  Manner 
is  a  fairly  representative  one.  The  Strangers' 
Gallery,  as  we  all  know,  is  kept  in  order  by 
certain  men  in  uniform,  who  tap  us  on  the 
shoulder  if  we  make  a  fuss.  Who  but  Max 
would  have  thought  of  referring  to  these  people 
as  '*  courteous,  magpie-like  officials ''  ?  Yet 
what  other  phrase  ever  described  them  so  well : 
how  magpie-like  they  are,  as  they  seem  to 
flutter  in  from  nowhere  in  particular  and  breathe 
the  unmistakable  intimation  that  the  offending 
party  must  depart !     Let  Max  continue  : 

Years  ago,  when  to  be  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Commons  was  to  be  (or  to  deem  one's  self)  a  personage 
of  great  importance,  the  debates  were  conducted  with 
a  keen  eye  to  effect.  Members  who  had  a  sense  of 
beauty  made  their  speeches  beautiful,  and  even  those 
to  whom  it  was  denied  did  their  best.  Grace  of 
ample  gesture  was  cultivated,  and  sonorous  elocution, 
and  lucid  ordering  of  ideas,  and  noble  language.  In 
fact,  there  was  a  school  of  oratory.  This  is  no  mere 
superstition,  bred  of  man's  innate  tendency  to 
exalt  the  past  above  the  present.  It  is  a  fact  that 
can  easily  be  verified  through  contemporary  records. 
It  is  a  fact  which  I  myself  have  verified  in  the  House 
with  my  own  eyes  and  ears.  More  than  once  I  heard 
there — and  it  was  a  pleasure  and  privilege  to  hear — 
a  speech  made  by  Sir  William  Harcourt.  And  from 
his  speeches  I  was  able  to  deduce  the  manner  of  his 
coevals  and  his  forerunners.  Long  past  his  prime 
he  was,  and  bearing  up  with  very  visible  effort  against 
his  years.    An  almost  extinct  volcano  !    But  sufficient 

124 


THE   *^ YELLOW   BOOK"   SCHOOL 

to  imagination  these  glimpses  of  the  glow  that  had 
been,  and  the  sight  of  these  last  poor  rivulets  of  the 
old  lava.  An  almost  extinct  volcano,  but  majestic 
among  mole-hills  ! 

This  at  once  gives  us  the  '*  atmosphere."  And 
after  a  reference  to  the  low  level  of  the  House 
of  Commons  debates.  Max  goes  on  to  say  : 

No  one  supposes  that  in  a  congeries  of — how  many  ? 
— six  hundred  and  seventy  men,  chosen  by  the  British 
public,  there  will  be  a  very  high  average  of  mental 
capacity.  If  any  one  were  so  sanguine,  a  glance  at 
the  faces  of  our  Conscript  Fathers  along  the  benches 
would  soon  bleed  him.  (I  have  no  doubt  that  the 
custom  of  wearing  hats  in  the  House  originated  in 
the  members'  unwillingness  to  let  strangers  spy  down 
on  the  shapes  of  their  heads.)  But  it  is  not  unreason- 
able to  expect  that  the  more  active  of  these  gentlemen 
will,  through  constant  practice,  not  only  in  the  Senate, 
but  also  at  elections  and  public  dinners  and  so  forth, 
have  acquired  a  rough-and-ready  professionalism  in 
the  art  of  speaking.  It  is  not  unreasonable  to  expect 
that  they  will  be  fairly  fluent — fairly  capable  of 
arranging  in  logical  sequence  such  ideas  as  they  may 
have  formed,  and  of  reeling  out  words  more  or  less 
expressive  of  these  ideas.  Well !  certain  of  the 
Irishmen,  certain  of  the  Welshmen,  proceed  easily 
enough.  But  oh !  those  Saxon  others  !  Look  at 
them,  hark  at  them,  poor  dears  !  See  them  clutching 
at  their  coats,  and  shuffling  from  foot  to  foot  in  tra- 
vail, while  their  ideas — ridiculous  mice,  for  the  most 
part — get  jerked  painfully  out  somehow  and  anyhow. 
**  It  seems  to  me  that  the  Right — the  honourable 
member  for — er — er  (the  speaker  dives  to  be  prompted) 
— ^yes,   of  course — -South  Clapham — er — {temporising) 

125 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

the  southern  division  of  Clapham — {long  pause  ;  his 
lips  form  the  words  "  Where  was  IP") — oh,  yes,  the 
honourable  gentleman  the  member  for  South  Clapham 
seems  to  me  to  me — to  be — in  the  position  of  one  who, 
whilst  the  facts  on  which  his  propo — sw/)position  are 
based — er — may  or  may  not  be  in  themselves  ace — 
correct  (gasps) — yet  inasmuch — because — nevertheless 
...  I  should  say  rather — er — what  it  comes  to  is 
this :  the  honourable  member  for  North — South 
Clapham  seems  to  be  labouring  under  a  total,  an 
entire,  a  complete  (emphatic  gesture,  which  throws  him 
off  his  tack) — a  contire — a  complete  distill — misunder- 
standing of  the  things  which  he  himself  relies  on  as 
— as — as  a  backing-up  of  the  things  that  he  would 
have  us  take  or — er — accept  and  receive  as  the  right 
sort  of  reduction — ^^duction  from  the  facts  of  .  .  . 
in  fact,  from  the  facts  of  the  case."  Then  the  poor 
dear  heaves  a  deep  sigh  of  relief,  which  is  drowned 
by  other  members  in  a  hideous  cachinnation  meant 
to  express  mirth. 

There  is  plenty  of  room  for  artistic  satire 
about  the  House  of  Commons,  and  this  is  an 
excellent  model  of  hov^  such  satire  might  be 
written.  If  Crackanthorpe  had  been  w^riting 
on  the  subject  he  would  have  made  the  scene 
much  more  realistic  and  much  less  good- 
natured.  Nevertheless,  one  cannot  help  wishing 
that  Crackanthorpe  had  chosen  such  a  scene 
rather  than  the  scene  on  the  parapet  of  the 
Embankment  where  a  **  respectable  married 
woman  "  is  offered  half  a  crown  to  break  her 
vows  of  fidelity  for  the  space  of  sixty  minutes. 

126 


THE  "YELLOW  BOOK"  SCHOOL 

Contrast  Max  and  Crackanthorpe  again.  Max 
is  indifferent  to  the  ugliness  of  the  streets 
through  which  he  passes,  and  the  sordidness 
or  wretchedness  of  the  people  on  them.  He  is 
impressed  more  by  the  ''  atmosphere  ''  and  the 
names  of  the  thoroughfares,  so  he  writes  an 
essay  on  the  naming  of  streets.  He  feels  the 
difference  between  "  (say)  Hill  Street  and  Pont 
Street,  High  Street  Kensington  and  High  Street 
Notting  Hill,  Fleet  Street  and  the  Strand.*' 

In  every  one  of  these  thoroughfares  my  mood  and 
my  manner  are  differently  affected.  In  Hill  Street, 
instinctively,  I  walk  very  slowly — sometimes  even 
with  a  slight  limp,  as  one  recovering  from  an  accident 
in  the  hunting-field.  I  feel  very  well  bred  there, 
and,  though  not  clever,  very  proud,  and  quick  to 
resent  any  familiarity  from  those  whom  elsewhere  I 
should  regard  as  my  equals.  In  Pont  Street  my 
demeanour  is  not  so  calm  and  measured.  I  feel  less 
sure  of  myself  and  adopt  a  slight  swagger.  In  High 
Street,  Kensington,  I  find  myself  dapper  and  respect- 
able, with  a  timid  leaning  to  the  fine  arts.  In  High 
Street,  Notting  Hill,  I  become  frankly  common. 
Fleet  Street  fills  me  with  a  conviction  that  if  I  don't 
make  haste  I  shall  be  jeopardising  the  national  welfare. 
The  Strand  utterly  unmans  me,  leaving  me  with  only 
two  sensations  :  (i)  a  regret  that  I  have  made  such 
a  mess  of  my  life  ;  (2)  a  craving  for  alcohol.  These 
are  but  a  few  instances.  If  I  had  time,  I  could  show 
you  that  every  street  known  to  me  in  London  has  a 
definite  effect  on  me,  and  that  no  two  streets  have 
exactly  the  same  effect. 

127 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Mention  of  the  Strand  recalls  the  fact  that 
Crackanthorpe  and  Max  met  on  common  ground 
here  ;  for  the  former  also  wrote  about  the 
Strand  in  his  Vignettes,  not  humorously,  how- 
ever, but  with  a  touch  of  the  melancholy  which 
seemed  to  permeate  the  souls  of  so  many 
writers  of  the  time  : 

The  City  disgorges. 

All  along  the  Strand,  down  the  great,  ebbing  tide, 
the  omnibuses,  a  congested  press  of  gaudy  craft,  drift 
westwards,  jostling  and  jamming  their  tall,  loaded 
decks,  with  a  clanking  of  chains,  a  rumble  of  lumber- 
ing wheels,  a  thudding  of  quick-loosed  brakes,  a 
humming  of  hammering  hoofs.  .  .  . 

The  empty  hansoms  slink  silently  past ;  the  street 
hawkers — a  long  row  of  dingy  figures — line  the  pave- 
ment-edge ;  troops  of  frenzied  newsboys  dart  yelling 
through  the  traffic  ;  and  here  and  there  a  sullen-faced 
woman  struggles  to  stem  the  tide  of  men. 

Somewhere,  behind  Pall  Mall,  unheeded  the  sun 
has  set :  the  sky  is  powdered  with  crimson  dust ; 
one  by  one  the  shops  gleam  out,  blazing  their  windows 
of  burnished  glass  ;  the  twilight  throbs  with  a  ceaseless 
shuffle  of  hurrying  feet ;  and  over  all  things  hovers 
the  spirit  of  London's  grim  unrest. 

We  might  take  Beerbohm  in  any  one  of  his 
essays  and  he  is  always  the  same — always 
penetrating,  always  humorous,  and  almost 
always  with  something  original  to  say  ;  always 
with  the  mot  juste.  Note,  for  example,  the 
use  of  the  word  *'  bleed ''  in  the  second  quota- 

128 


THE  /'YELLOW   BOOK"   SCHOOL 

tion  from  him  given  above.  Nor,  in  concluding 
this  short  reference  to  Max,  can  we  afford  to 
forget  that  he  was  once  referred  to  as  one  of 
the  three  cleverest  young  men  in  London.  The 
expression  is  now  out  of  date  so  far  as  the 
locality  is  concerned  ;  for  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton, 
one  of  the  other  two,  has  buried  himself  in  the 
country  and  become  a  parish  constable.  Mr. 
Belloc  is  still  with  us  ;  but  a  new  generation 
of  clever  young  men  is  beginning  to  come  to 
the  front. 

Three  more  names  connected  with  The  Yellow 
Book  and  Mr.  John  Lane  have  still  to  be  men- 
tioned— ^Lionel  Johnson,  Ernest  Dowson,  and 
Henry  Harland. 

Harland  was  another  of  the  school  whose 
career  was  made  pathetic  by  constant  illness 
and  comparatively  early  death.  He  shared 
with  his  countryman,  Whistler,  some  youthful 
knowledge  of  St.  Petersburg,  where  he  was 
born  in  March  1861.  When  his  family  removed 
to  New  York,  some  years  later,  young  Henry 
Harland  secured  an  appointment  in  the  surro- 
gate, one  of  the  legal  departments  of  New  York 
State,  and  while  here  he  wrote  his  early  works 
imder  the  name  of  Sidney  Luska.  They  dealt 
chiefly  with  Jewish  life  in  America ;  but  Mrs. 
9  129 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Peixada,  The  Land  of  Love,  or  My  Uncle  Flori- 
mond  need  not  detain  us  when  we  think  of  The 
Car  dinars  Snuff -Box  or  My  Friend  Prospero. 

Partly  on  account  of  his  delicate  health 
Harland  returned  to  Europe  and  worked  as  a 
journalist  in  England.  His  reputation  began 
with  The  Yellow  Book  period  ;  for  he  was,  as 
I  have  already  remarked,  the  literary  editor  of 
this  celebrated  periodical ;  and  to  his  keen 
appreciation  of  what  was  good  and  new  in 
literature  so  many  writers  owe  the  reputations 
which  they  afterwards  secured.  To  the  later 
numbers  of  The  Yellow  Book  Harland  con- 
tributed the  famous  series  of  articles  signed 
**  The  Yellow  Dwarf,'*  which  caused  much 
speculation  on  their  appearance.  Their  author- 
ship was  ascribed  to  men  so  different  as  Max 
Beerbohm  and  Austin  Dobson,  surely  a  sufficient 
proof  that  the  critics  of  the  period  had  but  a 
small  notion  of  what  constituted  style  in 
writing. 

All  this  time,  however,  Harland  was  dogged 
by  ill-health,  and  he  finally  took  up  his  resi- 
dence in  Italy.  He  once  more  began  to  write 
novels  after  the  suspension  of  The  Yellow  Book, 
and  in  1900  we  had  The  Cardinal's  Snuff-Box, 
followed    in    1902    by    The   Lady   Paramount, 

130 


THE   ^^ YELLOW   BOOK''   SCHOOL 

These  two  books,  with  My  Friend  Prosper o,  may 
be  reckoned  as  the  best  of  his  works.  They 
are  particularly  distinguished  by  the  char- 
acteristic feature  of  Harland's  style — a  pecu- 
liarly light,  naive  touch  of  humour  ;  and  his 
scenes  from  Italian  life  have  seldom  been 
equalled  for  brilliancy  and  conciseness  of  de- 
scription. Who  but  Harland  could  have  written 
of  the  weeping  cow  ?  You  remember  the 
scene  in  The  CardinaVs  Snuff -Box ;  the  cow 
has  had  her  calf  taken  away,  and  Marietta 
calls  Peter  out  to  watch  her  weeping,  **  like  a 
Christian. '* 

Peter  looked — and  sure  enough,  from  the  poor 
cow's  eyes  tears  were  falling  steadily,  rapidly ;  big 
limpid  tears  that  trickled  down  her  cheek,  her  great 
homely,  hairy  cheek,  and  dropped  on  the  grass  ;  tears 
of  helpless  pain,  uncomprehending  endurance.  **  Why 
have  they  done  this  thing  to  me  ?  "  they  seemed 
dumbly  to  cry. 

*'  Have  you  ever  seen  a  cow  weep  before  ?  It  is 
comical,  at  least  ?  '*   demanded  Marietta,  exultant, 

**  Comical  ?  "  Peter  gasped.  **  Comical !  "  he 
groaned. 

But  then  he  spoke  to  the  cow.  **  Poor  dear — poor 
dear!  "  he  repeated.  He  patted  her  soft  warm  neck, 
and  scratched  her  between  the  horns  and  along  the 
dewlap.     **  Poor  dear — poor  dear !  " 

The  cow  lifted  up  her  head,  and  rested  her  great 
chin  on  Peter's  shoulder,  breathing  upon  his  face. 

"  Yes,  you  know  that  we  are  companions  in  misery, 

131 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

don't  you  ?  "  he  said.  ..."  And  now  you  must 
try  to  pull  yourself  together.  It's  no  good  crying. 
And,  besides,  there  are  more  calves  in  the  sea  than 
have  ever  been  taken  from  it.  You'll  have  a  much 
handsomer  and  fatter  one  next  time.  And  besides, 
you  must  remember  that  your  loss  subserves  some  one 
else's  gain^ — the  farmer  would  never  have  done  it 
if  it  hadn't  been  to  his  advantage.  If  you're  an 
altruist,  that  should  comfort  you.  And  you  mustn't 
mind  Marietta — ^you  mustn't  mind  her  laughter. 
Marietta  is  a  Latin.  The  Latin  conception  of  what  is 
laughable  differs  by  the  whole  span  of  heaven  from 
the  Teuton.     You  and  I  are  Teutons." 

"  Teutons  ?  "  questioned  Marietta,  wrinkling  her 
brow. 

'*  Yes — Germanic,*'  said  he. 

"  But  I  thought  the  Signorino  was  English  ?  ** 

**  So  he  is." 

*'  But  the  cow  is  not  Germanic.  White,  with  black 
horns,  that  is  the  purest  Roman  breed,  Signorino.'* 

*'  Fa  niente,"  he  instructed  her.  "  Cows  and 
Englishmen,  and  all  such  sentimental  cattle,  including 
Germans,  are  Germanic.  Italians  are  Latin — with  a 
touch  of  the  Goth  and  Vandal.  Lions  and  tigers 
fight  because  they're  Mohammedans.  Dogs  still  bear 
without  abuse  the  grand  old  name  of  Sycophant. 
Cats  are  of  the  princely  line  of  Persia,  and  worship 
fire,  fish,  and  flattery — as  you  may  have  noticed. 
Geese  belong  indifferently  to  any  race  you  like — they 
are  cosmopolitans  ;  and  I've  known  here  and  there 
a  person  who,  without  distinction  of  nationality,  was 
a  duck." 

And  meanwhile  the  cow  stood  there,  with  her  head 
on  his  shoulder,  silently  weeping,  weeping.  He  gave 
her  a  farewell  rub  along  the  nose. 

Not  even  the  Italian  climate,  however,  could 
i?3 


THE   '^YELLOW   BOOK"   SCHOOL 

counterbalance  Harland's  delicate  constitution, 
and  he  died  at  San  Remo  towards  the  end  of 
December  1905.  His  career  was  cut  short 
just  at  a  time  when  he  might  have  continued  to 
give  us  of  his  best  work  ;  but,  although  his 
death  was  premature,  he  had  lived  ten  years 
longer  than  Lionel  Johnson,  one  of  the  best- 
read  and  most  penetrating  critics  of  the  day. 
I  have  already  illustrated  his  subtle  style  by  a 
quotation  from  Tobacco  Clouds  in  The  Yellow 
Book  ;  but  his  Art  of  Thomas  Hardy  is  worth 
more  than  merely  a  passing  reference.  It 
alone,  perhaps,  of  all  Johnson's  few  works, 
enables  us  to  gauge  the  extent  of  his  reading 
and  the  diversity  of  his  knowledge  of  different 
periods  of  English  literature,  from  the  end 
of  the  seventeenth  century  onwards.  He  ap- 
pears to  have  been  particularly  influenced  by 
eighteenth-century  literature,  if  we  may  judge 
not  only  from  his  references  but  also  from  his 
eighteenth-century  use  of  the  comma.  He 
knows  his  Dr.  Johnson,  his  Richardson,  and 
his  Fielding  ;  but  not  more  than  he  knows 
George  Eliot,  Meredith,  and  the  man  he  wrote 
about,  Thomas  Hardy.  A  book  which  is  known 
to  all  lovers  of  first-class  criticism  cannot  be 
summed  up  here  in  a  quotation  or  two  ;  but 

133 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

I  will  at  all  events  give  a  passage  which  is  of 
interest  even  when  detached  from  its  context. 
It  is  from  the  first  chapter  of  his  book  on  Hardy. 

There  are  theorists,  who  maintain  the  absolute 
independence  of  the  artist ;  his  "  unchartered  free- 
dom "  from  all  traditions,  and  from  all  influences  ; 
his  isolated  station,  his  spontaneous  powers  :  and  there 
are  theorists,  who  maintain  the  entire  dependence  of 
the  artist  upon  hereditary  impulse,  upon  circumstantial 
influence,  upon  local  forces,  and  upon  social  ten- 
dencies ;  they  rob  him  of  his  originality,  that  they 
may  fit  him  into  their  theory.  The  great  name  of 
Carlyle,  and  the  distinguished  name  of  M.  Taine,  may 
stand  sponsors  for  the  two  doctrines.  And  yet  the 
truth  would  seem  to  lie  between  these  two  desperate 
extremities,  of  plenary  inspiration  and  of  mechanical 
necessity :  between  that  doctrine,  which  detaches 
the  artist  from  his  fellow  men  ;  and  that  doctrine, 
which  forbids  them  to  see,  even  in  the  artist,  an 
example  of  free  and  creative  will.  At  the  least,  it  is 
of  interest  to  consider  the  middle  position  :  to  con- 
template the  artist,  the  man  of  letters,  in  his  relation 
to  past  times  and  to  his  own,  with  something  of  a 
Positivist  spirit,  tempered  by  a  saving  disbelief  in 
Positivism.  The  result  of  such  a  meditation  might 
be  of  this  kind  ;  with  due  allowance  for  "  accidental 
variations." 

The  supreme  duties  of  the  artist  toward  his  art, 
as  of  all  workmen  toward  their  work,  are  two  in 
number,  but  of  one  kind :  a  duty  of  reverence,  of 
fidelity,  of  understanding,  toward  the  old,  great 
masters  ;  and  a  duty  of  reverence,  of  fidelity,  of 
understanding,  toward  the  living  age  and  the  living 
artist.    There   are   times   when   the   two   duties   are 

134 


THE  *' YELLOW  BOOK"  SCHOOL 

hard  to  reconcile  ;  when  the  artistic  conscience  must 
put  forth  all  its  honest  casuistry,  and  determine  the 
true  solution  with  laborious  care. 

This  is  a  passage  which  all  critics  must  keep 
in  mind,  a  passage  laying  down  sound  elemental 
principles,  and  one,  therefore,  of  permanent 
value. 

We  have,  too,  several  poems  by  Lionel  John- 
son. He  is  not  so  subtle  in  his  interpretation 
of  moods  as  Symons  or  Dowson  ;  but  neverthe- 
less many  of  his  short  pieces  have  genuine  merit 
and  charm — such  lines,  for  example,  as  Ash- 
Wednesday  : 

IN    MEMORIAM:    ERNEST    DOWSON. 

Memento,  homo,  quia  pulvis  es  ! 
To-day  the  cross  of  ashes  marks  my  brow  : 
Yesterday,  laid  to  solemn  sleep  wert  thou, 
O  dear  to  me  of  old,  and  dearer  now  ! 
Memento,  homo,  quia  pulvis  es  ! 

Memento,  homo,  quia  pulvis  es  f 
And  all  the  subtile  beauty  of  that  face. 
With  all  its  winning,  all  its  wistful  grace. 
Fades  in  the  consecrated  stilly  place  : 
Memento,  homo,  quia  pulvis  es  ! 

Memento,  homo,  quia  pulvis  es  ! 

The  visible  vehement  earth  remains  to  me  : 

The  visionary  quiet  land  holds  thee  : 

But  what  shall  separate  such  friends  as  we  ? 

Memento,  homo,  quia  pulvis  es  ! 

The  Precept  of  Silence,  again,  is  almost  worthy 
of  Mr.  Symons  : 

135 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

I  know  you  :  solitary  griefs, 
Desolate  passions,  aching  hours 
I  know  you  :    tremulous  beliefs, 
Agonized  hopes,  and  ashen  flowers  I 

The  winds  are  sometimes  sad  to  me  ; 
The  starry  spaces,  full  of  fear  : 
Mine  is  the  sorrow  on  the  sea, 
And  mine  the  sigh  of  places  drear. 

Some  players  upon  plaintive  strings 
Publish  their  wistfulness  abroad  : 
I  have  not  spoken  of  these  things. 
Save  to  one  man,  and  unto  God. 

There  remains  Dowson.  It  is  useless,  it 
seems  to  me,  to  essay  the  task  of  placing  him, 
Symons,  and  Davidson  in  any  precise  order. 
Each  had  his  distinctive  merits — fortunately 
we  may  still  use  the  present  tense  of  Mr.  Symons 
— and  Dowson's  have  been  described  admirably 
by  Mr.  Symons  himself.  He  was  first  and 
foremost  a  poet  :  his  short  stories  in  The  Savoy 
are  fine  models,  and  the  critic  will  enjoy  looking 
through  A  Comedy  of  Masks,  written  in  colla- 
boration with  Mr.  Arthur  Moore,  and  picking 
out  the  traces  of  Dowson's  hand.  But  it  is 
as  a  poet  that  he  will  live  :  not  even  his  book 
Stones  and  Studies  in  Sentiment  raises  him  so 
high  as  a  prose-writer  as  his  poetical  works  raise 
him  as  a  poet.  Let  Mr.  Symons  sum  up  his 
merits  and  charm  : 

136 


THE  *' YELLOW  BOOK"  SCHOOL 

There  never  was  a  poet  to  whom  verse  came  more 
naturally,  for  the  song's  sake ;  his  theories  were  all 
aesthetic,  almost  technical  ones,  such  as  a  theory, 
indicated  by  his  preference  for  the  line  of  Poe  ["  the 
viol,  the  violet,  and  the  vine  "],  that  the  letter  *'  v  " 
was  the  most  beautiful  of  the  letters,  and  could  never 
be  brought  into  verse  too  often.  For  any  more 
abstract  theories  he  had  neither  tolerance  nor  heed. 
Poetry  as  a  philosophy  did  not  exist  for  him  ;  it  existed 
solely  as  the  loveliest  of  the  arts.  He  loved  the 
elegance  of  Horace,  all  that  was  most  complex  in  the 
simplicity  of  Poe,  most  birdlike  in  the  human  melodies 
of  Verlaine.  He  had  the  pure  lyric  gift,  unweighted 
or  unballasted  by  any  other  quality  of  mind  or  emo- 
tion ;  and  a  song,  for  him,  was  music  first,  and  then 
whatever  you  please  afterwards,  so  long  as  it  suggested, 
never  told,  some  delicate  sentiment,  a  sigh  or  a  caress  ; 
finding  words,  at  times,  as  perfect  as  the  words  of  a 
poem  headed,  *'  O  Mors  !  quam  amara  est  memoria 
tua  homini  pacem  habenti  in  substantiis  suis.*'  There, 
surely,  the  music  of  silence  speaks,  if  it  has  ever 
spoken.  The  words  seem  to  tremble  back  into  the 
silence  which  their  whisper  has  interrupted,  but  not 
before  they  have  created  for  us  a  mood,  such  a  mood 
as  the  Venetian  Pastoral  of  Giorgione  renders  in 
painting. 

The  poem  referred  to  by  Mr.  Symons  seems 
to  me  so  finished  and  exquisite  a  production 
that  I  quote  it  in  full : 

Exceeding  sorrow 

Consumeth  my  sad  heart ! 
Because  to-morrow 

We  must  part. 
Now  is  exceeding  sorrow 

All  my  part  1 

137 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Give  over  playing. 

Cast  thy  viol  away  : 
Merely  laying 

Thine  head  my  way  : 
Prithee,  give  over  playing. 

Grave  or  gay. 

Be  no  word  spoken  ; 

Weep  nothing  :   let  a  pale 
Silence,  unbroken 

Silence  prevail  I 
Prithee,  be  no  word  spoken. 

Lest  I  fail ! 

Forget  to-morrow  I 

Weep  nothing  :   only  lay 
In  silent  sorrow 

Thine  head  my  way  : 
Let  us  forget  to-morrow. 

This  one  day  I 

Mr.  Symons  goes  on  to  say — I  am  quoting 
from  his  introduction  to  Dowson's  volume  of 
poems — that : 

No  one  ever  worshipped  beauty  more  devoutly, 
and  ...  he  never  admitted  an  emotion  which  he 
could  not  transfigure  with  beauty.  He  knew  his 
limits  only  too  well ;  he  knew  that  the  deeper  and 
graver  things  of  life  were  for  the  most  part  outside 
the  circle  of  his  magic  ;  he  passed  them  by,  leaving 
much  of  himself  unexpressed,  because  he  would  permit 
himself  to  express  nothing  imperfectly,  or  according 
to  anything  but  his  own  conception  of  the  dignity 
of  poetry.  In  the  lyric  in  which  he  has  epitomised 
himself  and  his  whole  life,  a  lyric  which  is  certainly 
one  of  the  greatest  lyrical  poems  of  our  time,  "  Non 

138 


THE   "YELLOW   BOOK"   SCHOOL 

sum  qualis  eram  bonae  sub  regno  Cynarae,"  he  has 
for  once  said  everything,  and  he  has  said  it  to  an 
intoxicating  and  perhaps  immortal  music  : 

Last  night,  ah,  yesternight,  betwixt  her  lips  and  mine 
There  fell  thy  shadow,  Cynara  !  thy  breath  was  shed 
Upon  my  soul  between  the  kisses  and  the  wine  ; 
And  I  was  desolate  and  sick  of  an  old  passion. 

Yea,  I  was  desolate  and  bowed  my  head  : 
I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara  !   in  my  fashion. 

All  night  upon  mine  heart  I  felt  her  warm  heart  beat. 
Night-long  within  mine  arms  in  love  and  sleep  she  lay  ; 
Surely  the  kisses  of  her  bought  red  mouth  were  sweet ; 
But  I  was  desolate  and  sick  of  an  old  passion. 

When  I  awoke  and  found  the  dawn  was  gray  ; 
I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara  !   in  my  fashion. 

I  have  forgot  much,  Cynara  !   gone  with  the  wind. 
Flung  roses,  roses  riotously  with  the  throng, 
Dancing,  to  put  thy  pale,  lost  lilies  out  of  mind  ; 
But  I  was  desolate  and  sick  of  an  old  passion. 

Yea,  all  the  time,  because  the  dance  was  long : 
I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara  !   in  my  fashion. 

I  cried  for  madder  music  and  for  stronger  wine, 
But  when  the  feast  is  finished  and  the  lamps  expire, 
Then  falls  thy  shadow,  Cynara  !   the  night  is  thine  ; 
And  I  am  desolate  and  sick  of  an  old  passion. 

Yea,  hungry  for  the  lips  of  my  desire  : 
I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara !    in  my  fashion. 

This  is  indeed  immortal  music — as  immortal 
as  Catullus  in  his  happiest  moments,  and  not 
to  be  compared  with  anything  but  a  few  of  the 
finest  efforts  of  the  Latin  poet. 

Dowson's  fate,  too,  was  pathetic,  tragic.    A 

139 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

hopeless  love  almost  unbalanced  him,  and  he 
died  in  February  1900,  in  his  thirty-third  year. 
Feverish  spells  of  drinking  and  drugging  alter- 
nated with  spells  of  hard  literary  work  ;  but 
the  evil  cravings  conquered.  Nature  is  hard 
on  her  most  beloved  children  :  if  this  truism 
still  requires  to  be  proved,  I  defy  the  most 
serene  optimist  to  fail  to  be  impressed  by  it 
when  he  considers  the  fate  of  some  of  these 
highly-gifted  writers  of  the  last  generation  of 
English  literature. 


140 


CHAPTER  V 

AUBREY  BEARDSLEY  AND  OTHERS 

Mr.  Aymer  Vallance  has  compiled  a  list 
of  Aubrey  Beardsley's  drawings  which  extends 
over  fifty  odd  pages.  It  is  a  long  list,  and 
the  drawings  include  every  conceivable  subject 
that  an  artist  can  be  expected  to  handle,  and 
yet  all  the  work  which  this  list  represents  was 
accomplished  in  six  years  by  a  young  man  who 
died  before  his  twenty-sixth  birthday. 

Aubrey  Beardsley  was  born  at  Brighton  in 
August  1872,  but  even  at  the  early  age  of  seven 
he  showed  symptoms  of  lung  trouble.  In  spite 
of  this  he  proved  to  be  an  eager  scholar  and 
made  remarkable  progress  in  his  schooldays. 
He  was  truly  what  the  biologist  would  be 
inclined  to  call  a  sporting  plant.  There  appears 
to  have  been  nothing  in  his  parents  to  account 
for  his  remarkable  artistic  and  little  less  re- 
markable literary  gifts.  When  a  comparative 
child  he  showed  much  aptitude  for  music  and 
drawing,  and  at  the  age  of  eleven  played  at 

141 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

concerts  with  his  sister.  He  had,  Mr.  Robert 
Ross  tells  us,  a  great  knowledge  of  music  and 
always  spoke  dogmatically  on  this  subject. 
While  attending  Brighton  Grammar  School  he 
caricatured  his  masters,  and,  contrary  to  the 
usual  practice,  did  not  get  into  trouble  for 
doing  so.  About  1890  he  gave  up  the  obscurity 
of  an  insurance  office  in  order  to  devote  his 
time  to  illustrating  Marlowe  and  Congreve. 
His  first  important  commission  came  from  Mr. 
Dent,  who  employed  him  to  illustrate  the 
Morte  d* Arthur. 

In  view  of  Beardsley's  artistic  occupations 
and  his  state  of  health,  which  remained  con- 
stantly delicate,  the  extent  of  his  reading  was 
certainly  extraordinary.  He  read  not  merely 
superficially  but  thoroughly  in  almost  every 
department  of  literature.  He  was  undoubtedly 
anxious  to  achieve  literary  as  well  as  artistic 
success,  but  it  is  on  the  whole  fortunate  that 
art  secured  the  upper  hand.  His  literary 
remains  have  been  published,  and  all  that  can 
be  said  of  them  is  that  they  are  too  brilliant, 
whether  we  take  his  poetry  or  his  prose.  Never- 
theless we  cannot  withhold  a  considerable 
amount  of  admiration  for  one  of  his  poetical 
attempts,    viz.,    a  translation    from    Catullus 

142 


BEARDSLEY  AND   OTHERS 

(Carmen  CI)  which  appeared  in  No.  70  of  The 
Savoy : 

By  ways  remote  and  distant  waters  sped. 
Brother,  to  thy  sad  graveside  am  I  come. 
That  I  may  give  the  last  gifts  to  the  dead 
And  vainly  parley  with  thine  ashes  dumb  : 
Since  she  who  now  bestows  and  now  denies 
Hath  ta'en  thee,  hapless  brother,  from  mine  eyes. 

But  lo  !   these  gifts,  these  heirlooms  of  past  years 
Are  made  sad  things  to  grace  thy  coffin's  shell. 
Take  them  all  drenched  with  a  brother's  tears. 
And,  brother,  for  all  time,  hail  and  farewell ! 

The  drawing  which  accompanies  this  trans- 
lation cannot  be  said  to  be  at  all  representative 
of  Beardsley  at  his  best,  but  there  are  plenty 
of  others  to  choose  from. 

We  may  pass  over  Beardsley's  artistic  con- 
tributions to  the  Pall  Mall  Budget,  The  Bee, 
and  The  Studio,  to  mention  the  most  important 
and  distinctive  series  of  drawings  he  ever  under- 
took, viz.,  the  illustrations  to  the  English  ver- 
sion of  Oscar  Wilde's  Salome,  which  Mr.  John 
Lane  published  in  1894.  It  is  perhaps  this 
series  of  sixteen  drawings  which,  more  than 
anything  else  he  did,  shows  Beardsley  to 
have  been  unique  in  the  world's  art.  In 
them  he  shows  himself  to  be  a  thorough 
representative    of    what    Mr.    Ludovici    calls 

143 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

the  ruler-artist  type.  He  does  not  illustrate 
the  weird  play  in  the  sense  in  which  we 
usually  employ  the  word  illustrate.  He  sub- 
ordinates everything  to  his  arbitrary  artistic 
will.  But  what  gives  the  drawings  added 
piquancy  and  point  is  the  fact  that  Beardsley 
did  not  like  Wilde  personally,  and  delicately 
satirized  the  play  in  his  illustrations.  We  start 
off,  indeed,  with  a  very  thinly-veiled  satire 
on  Wilde  himself,  as  we  can  easily  imagine  him 
to  have  looked  in  the  year  1893  or  1894.  Those 
who  have  seen  photographs  of  Wilde  taken 
about  this  period  cannot  mistake  "  the  woman 
in  the  moon.''  This  picture,  too,  gives  us  a 
very  fair  notion  of  one  aspect  of  Beardsley's 
powers  as  an  artist.  Only  a  dozen  firm,  yet 
fine  and  delicate  strokes,  and  we  have  the  two 
figures.  As  for  the  marvellous  effects  of  the 
mere  white  and  black  patches,  it  is  impossible 
to  describe  them.  The  curious  upward  twist 
given  to  the  eyebrows  of  the  woman  in  the 
moon,  and  the  semicircles  of  almost  invisible 
dots  to  represent  the  eyelashes,  are  other 
examples  of  Beardsley's  genius.  Note,  too, 
the  delicate  tracery  of  the  drawing  on  the  title- 
page  and  on  the  page  containing  the  list  of  the 
pictures.  In  this  latter  the  arbitrary  bend  of 
144 


BEARDSLEY  AND   OTHERS 

the   woman's   body   shows   how   infinitely   far 
Beardsley  was  from  being  a  mere  realist. 

To  go  through  all  the  pictures  in  this  way 
would  be  an  artistic  education  in  black  and 
white.  The  unique  design  on  the  border  of 
*'  The  Peacock  Skirt  '*  is  no  more  unique  in  its 
way  than  the  design  on  "The  Black  Cape.'* 
In  this  latter  drawing,  too,  mention  should  be 
made  of  the  arbitrary  placing  of  the  left  hand. 
The  right  hand  is  not  so  well  drawn,  but 
we  forget  this  when  we  look  at  those  three 
curls,  with  the  middle  one  just  a  trifle  longer 
than  the  other  two.  Notice  again  the  arbitrary 
pose  of  ''  John  and  Salome,'*  with  the  sun- 
flowers just  breathing  a  hint  of  satire  on  the 
aesthetic  movement.  Consider,  too,  the  mar- 
vellous effects  obtained  in  *'  Enter  Herodias.'' 
At  first  we  merely  see  the  jester's  arm  and  hand, 
with  the  peculiar  ruffle  on  the  wrist,  then  the 
fearsome  head  and  the  enormous  breasts. 
Little  by  little  the  Beardsleyesque  details 
become  revealed.  Look  at  the  middle  candle, 
for  example.  In  ''  The  Dancer's  Reward  "  we 
forget  the  bad  drawing  of  the  left  hand  in  the 
wonderful  hair  and  the  expression  on  the  face 
of  Jokanaan's  severed  head.  Observe  the 
wonderful  effects  Beardsley  produces  by  the 
10  145 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

use  of  a  few  dots  round  Jokanaan's  eyes  and 
Salome's  hair.  In  ''  The  Toilette  of  Salom6 
(No.  i)  ''  we  have  another  example  of  Beardsley's 
arbitrariness.  The  scene  lies  in  the  East, 
centuries  ago,  but  the  toilet  table  contains  a 
very  modern  powder  puff  and  a  bottle  of  perfume 
and  two  or  three  equally  modern  French  novels 
on  the  lowest  shelf.  The  costume,  again, 
belongs  presumably  to  the  Queen  Anne  period. 
Yet  all  these  incongruities  are  forgotten  when 
we  see  the  remarkable  effect  produced  by  the 
ensemble.  *'  The  Toilette  of  Salome  (No.  2)  " 
is  even  more  remarkable.  The  pose  of  the 
young  slave  with  the  coffee,  the  powder  puff 
grasped  in  the  finger  and  thumb  of  the  left 
hand  of  Salome's  coiffeur,  and  the  arbitrary 
pose  of  Salome  herself,  especially  the  head,  make 
up  an  entirely  classic  picture,  the  effect  of  which 
is  enhanced  by  the  circles  of  dots  round  the 
three  shoes  which  are  visible  to  us.  ''  The 
Climax  "  brings  us  into  the  region  of  Beardsley's 
grotesques,  and  partly  recalls  the  **  Design  from 
Lysistrata."  Look  at  Jokanaan's  wonderful 
hair  and  Salome's  equally  wonderful  curls. 
The  tailpiece  to  Salom6  is  a  classic. 

For  quite  another  side  of  Beardsley's  art,  we 
may  turn  to  "  The  Battle  of  the  Beaux  and 

146 


BEARDSLEY  AND   OTHERS 

Belles,"  from  The  Rape  of  the  Lock.  The  scene 
as  a  whole  is  no  more  beyond  praise  than  the 
details  which  go  to  make  it  up.  Look  at  the 
hair  of  the  central  figure  and  compare  it  with 
the  folds  of  the  window-blinds.  Notice  also  the 
marvellous  pattern  on  the  back  and  seat  of 
the  fallen  chair.  But  **  The  Baron's  Prayer,"  in 
the  same  series,  is  equally  worthy  of  mention. 
Observe  the  wonderful  cloak  and  the  arbi- 
trary placing  of  the  table  and  the  marvellous 
trees. 

I  have  already  referred  to  Beardsley's  con- 
nection with  The  Yellow  Book,  the  art  editor- 
ship of  which  his  ill-health  compelled  him  to 
give  up  when  the  fourth  number  had  been 
published.  By  the  end  of  1895  he  had  suffici- 
ently recovered  to  join  Mr.  Arthur  Symons  and 
Mr.  Leonard  Smithers  in  founding  The  Savoy. 
It  was  here  that  Beardsley  published  his  un- 
finished novel  Under  the  Hill,  and  to  The  Savoy 
also  he  contributed  that  wonderful  portrait  of 
himself  with  the  extraordinary  hands  and  brow. 
Under  the  Hill  is  simply  a  curious  literary 
experiment,  and,  except  purely  as  a  matter  of 
curiosity,  we  have  no  particular  cause  for  regret 
that  it  remained  unfinished. 

Beardsley's   health,    however,    continued   to 

147 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

fail,  and  in  March  1896,  he  caught  a  chill  at 
Brussels,  which  considerably  shortened  a  life 
that  was  from  the  first  never  destined  to  be  a 
very  long  one.  A  year  later  he  entered  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  and  in  another  twelve- 
month (March  23,  1898)  he  died  at  Mentone. 

Mr.  Robert  Ross  has  already  taken  the  trouble 
to  inform  us  that  Beardsley  was  never  a  sym- 
bolist and  never  professed  to  be  ;  but  a  large 
section  of  the  British  public  has  nevertheless 
persisted  in  reading  into  his  drawings  meanings 
which  the  artist  never  intended  to  place  there, 
meanings  which  would  have  horrified  him. 
When  Wilde  laid  down  the  dogma  that  criticism 
in  art  should  simply  be  the  starting-point  of  a 
new  creation,  he  overlooked  the  inferiority  of  the 
non-artistic  intellect.  Beardsley 's  art,  there- 
fore, instead  of  being  properly  interpreted,  was 
merely  looked  upon  as  being  the  pictorial  repre- 
sentation of  the  state  of  mind  which  Wilde 
himself  had  so  well  described  in  prose  in  Dorian 
Gray.  Those  who  took  part  in  the  aesthetic 
movement,  in  other  words,  were  very  generally 
thought  to  be  a  set  of  moral  perverts,  typically 
represented  in  prose  and  in  verse  by  Oscar 
Wilde  and  in  pictures  by  Beardsley.  This  seems 
justly  ridiculous  to  us  at  the  present  day,  but 

148 


BEARDSLEY  AND   OTHERS 

fifteen  years  or  so  ago  the  British  public  was 
not  particularly  discriminating. 

If  one  were  asked  what  was  the  most  distinc- 
tive character  of  Beardsley's  work  the  answer 
would  probably  be  the  firmness  of  his  line  draw- 
ing. We  can  see  this  in  nearly  every  one  of  his 
pictures,  though  it  is  perhaps  particularly  notice- 
able in  The  Rape  of  the  Lock  series  and  in  the 
wonderful  portrait  of  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell. 
Next  to  this  should  be  mentioned  his  arbitrary 
method  of  handling  the  human  form,  several 
examples  of  which  I  have  already  referred  to. 
His  style  was  entirely  his  own,  and  his  alleged 
plagiarism  from  or  imitation  of  this  or  that 
Continental  artist  need  not  be  taken  seriously. 
The  fact  remains  that  Beardsley  was  a 
thoroughly  original  artist,  and  the  drawings 
he  executed  in  so  relatively  short  a  time  are  a 
permanent  tribute  no  less  to  his  genius  than  to 
his  industry.  His  popularity  in  cultured  circles 
never  spoilt  him  ;  and  the  influence  he  exer- 
cised on  the  artistic  movement  of  his  time  makes 
it  necessary  to  discuss  his  position  with  some 
fullness. 

There  were,  nevertheless,  other  artists  whose 
names  must  be  mentioned  in  connection  with 
English  literature  in  the  eighties  and  nineties. 

149 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Probably  the  greatest  of  them  all  was  James 
McNeill  Whistler,  who  was  just  beginning  to 
come  into  his  own  about  1880,  and  may  be  said 
to  have  reached  the  height  of  his  fame  in 
England  in  1890.  Like  Wilde,  he  suffered 
much  from  misinterpretation  by  philistine 
journalists  ;  but  the  publication  of  his  book, 
The  Gentle  Art  of  Making  Enemies,  in  1890, 
followed  by  an  enlarged  edition  in  1892,  turned 
the  tables  in  a  manner  which  is  likely  to  be  long 
remembered.  For  how  dangerous  Whistler  could 
be  on  paper  is  fresh  in  the  memories  of  many  of 
us  who  are  still  living.  As  a  wit  and  intel- 
lectual fencer,  he  far  excelled  Wilde,  and  as  an 
artist  his  theories  no  less  than  his  pictures 
themselves  still  continue  to  arouse  that  amount 
of  bitter  discussion  and  criticism  which  all 
original  work  occasions  sooner  or  later.  If 
he  showed  any  fault  in  his  theories,  it  was, 
perhaps,  his  inclination  to  err  on  the  side  of 
being  mechanical :  witness  his  arithmetical 
calculations  as  to  how  far  back  in  the  canvas  the 
sitter  should  appear  to  be  placed  when  viewed 
by  the  spectator  at  a  certain  distance  from  the 
picture.  After  all,  however,  this  is  but  one 
fault,  and  it  did  not  affect  Whistler's  own  work. 
It  is  unfortunate,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
150 


BEARDSLEY  AND   OTHERS 

the  British  public,  that  so  many  of  Whistler's 

pictures  have  been  allowed  to  cross  the  Atlantic ; 

but  there  is  still  a  fine  collection  of  his  etchings 

in  the  British  Museum.     And  then  again  we 

have  that  famous  book  of  his,  a  book  that  has 

been  so  well  dealt  with  by  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm 

that  I  will  quote  a  passage  from  his  criticism  of 

it — a  passage  which  does  equal  justice  to  Mr. 

Beerbohm's  own  insight  and  clearness  of  style  : 

His  style  never  falters.  The  silhouette  of  no 
sentence  is  ever  blurred.  Every  sentence  is  ringing 
with  a  clear  vocal  cadence.  There,  after  all,  in  that 
vocal  quality,  is  the  chief  test  of  good  writing.  Writing 
as  a  means  of  expression  has  to  compete  with  talking. 
The  talker  need  not  rely  wholly  on  what  he  says. 
He  has  the  help  of  his  mobile  face  and  hands,  and  of 
his  voice,  with  its  various  inflexions  and  its  variable 
pace,  whereby  he  may  insinuate  fine  shades  of  mean- 
ing, qualifying  or  strengthening  at  will,  and  clothing 
naked  words  with  colour,  and  making  dead  words 
live.  But  the  writer  ?  He  can  express  a  certain 
amount  through  his  handwriting,  if  he  write  in  a 
properly  elastic  way.  But  his  writing  is  not  printed 
in  facsimile.  It  is  printed  in  cold,  mechanical,  mono- 
tonous type.  For  his  every  effect  he  must  rely  wholly 
on  the  words  that  he  chooses,  and  on  the  order  in 
which  he  ranges  them,  and  on  his  choice  among  the 
few  hard-and-fast  symbols  of  punctuation.  He  must 
so  use  their  slender  means  that  they  shall  express 
all  that  he  himself  can  express  through  his  voice  and 
face  and  hands,  or  all  that  he  would  thus  express 
if  he  were  a  good  talker.  Usually,  the  good  talker 
is  a  dead  failure  when  he  tries  to  express  himself  in 

151 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

writing.  For  that  matter,  so  is  the  bad  talker.  But 
the  bad  talker  has  the  better  chance  of  success,  inas- 
much as  the  inexpressiveness  of  his  voice  and  face 
and  hands  will  have  sharpened  his  scent  for  words  and 
phrases  that  shall  in  themselves  convey  such  meanings 
as  he  has  to  express.  Whistler  was  that  rare  pheno- 
menon, the  good  talker  who  could  write  as  well  as 
he  talked.  Read  any  page  of  The  Gentle  Art  of  Making 
Enemies y  and  you  will  hear  a  voice  in  it,  and  see  a 
face  in  it,  and  see  gestures  in  it.  And  none  of  these 
is  quite  like  any  other  known  to  you.  It  matters  not 
that  you  never  knew  Whistler,  never  even  set  eyes  on 
him.  You  see  him  and  know  him  here.  The  voice 
drawls  slowly,  quickening  to  a  kind  of  snap  at  the 
end  of  every  sentence,  and  sometimes  rising  to  a  sudden 
screech  of  laughter ;  and,  all  the  while,  the  line  fierce 
eyes  of  the  talker  are  flashing  out  at  you,  and  his 
long  nervous  fingers  are  tracing  extravagant  arab- 
esques in  the  air.  No  !  you  need  never  have  seen 
Whistler  to  know  what  he  was  like.  He  projected 
through  printed  words  the  clean-cut  image  and  clear- 
ringing  echo  of  himself.  He  was  a  born  writer, 
achieving  perfection  through  pains  which  must  have 
been  infinite  for  that  we  see  at  first  sight  no  trace  of 
them  at  all. 

There  were  also,  of  course,  Continental  in- 
fluences of  various  kinds  and  tendencies.  There 
was  Wagner,  whose  own  efforts  helped  to  swell 
the  flood  of  romanticism  to  an  enormous  extent 
— for  Nietzsche's  essay  on  him,  although  trans- 
lated into  French  in  the  late  eighties,  was  not 
published  in  English  until  some  years  after- 
wards, and  then  was  misunderstood.    There  was 

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BEARDSLEY  AND   OTHERS 

Ibsen,  too — the  perverse  and  astringent  misery 
from  Scandinavia,  as  Lionel  Johnson  put  it. 
There  were  the  French  impressionists,  Manet, 
Monet,  Renoir,  Bastien-Lepage,  and  so  forth. 
And  there  was  also  the  influence  of  Japanese 
art,  which  Whistler  was  really  the  first  to  study 
with  any  degree  of  thoroughness  and  insight, 
but  which  also  attracted  the  attention  of  Wilde 
and  was  satirised  accordingly  in  one  of  Gilbert's 
plays.  We  cannot  of  course  overlook  the 
originator  of  the  symbolistic  movement  in 
France,  Mallarme,  one  of  the  first  to  hold  that 
poetry  should  avoid  detail  and  should  create 
merely  by  suggestion. 

Another  French  poet  whose  work  influenced 
writers  of  this  period  to  some  extent  was 
Baudelaire ;  but  a  still  more  profound  in- 
fluence was  Verlaine,  who  was  so  enthusiastically 
studied  by  Mr.  Arthur  Symons.  One  has  only 
to  read  over  such  a  piece  as  "  Mon  Dieu  m'a 
dit ''  to  realise  how  Verlaine  would  appeal  to 
the  English  romanticists.  And,  of  course,  there 
were  Guy  de  Maupassant,  Flaubert,  and  Zola, 
Russia  made  the  influence  of  her  melancholy 
realism  felt  through  Tourgenieff  and  Dostoieffski, 
and  Shaw,  too,  was  the  means  of  introducing 
many  new  Continental  ideas  into  England. 

153 


CHAPTER   VI 

GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

Can  we  realise  at  the  present  day  the  intel- 
lectual state  of  England  from  the  sixties  and 
seventies  ?  Or  rather  can  we  say  that  there 
was  an  intellectual  England  at  all  about  that 
period  ?  There  was,  it  is  true,  a  scientific 
England,  represented  chiefly  by  Herbert  Spencer, 
Darwin,  and  Huxley  ;  but  the  science  of  these 
men,  whatever  may  be  claimed  for  it  by  their 
admirers,  and  however  much  it  may  have 
added  to  our  purely  material  knowledge,  had 
nothing  creative  about  it,  nothing  of  the  artist, 
nothing  of  the  poet,  nothing  of  the  philosopher. 
Huxley  was,  perhaps,  the  most  cultured  man  of 
the  three  ;  but  even  he  fell  short  of  an  artistic 
ideal.  As  for  Darwin,  we  can  only  say  of  him 
as  Nietzsche  said,  "Er  hat  den  Geist  vergessen, 
wie  alle  Englander  '* :  like  all  Englishmen  he 
forgot  the  mind.  As  for  Spencer,  I  know  of  no 
better  criticism  on  him  than  that  written  by 
the  Italian  Papini,  who  speaks  of  Spencer's 
154 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

philosophy  as  the  patient  and  untiring  labour 
of  an  out-of-work  engineer. 

The  whole  period  was  inimical  to  art  of  every 
description.  Scientific  atheism  had  driven 
away  every  trace  of  poetic  imagination,  and 
the  artist  had  no  chance  in  the  midst  of  men 
who  called  for  facts.  It  always  happened, 
of  course,  that  when  the  facts  they  called  for 
were  not  to  their  liking  they  idealised  them, 
as  all  romanticists  do.  It  is  only  within  quite 
recent  years  that  men  like  Belloc  and  Chesterton 
have  begun  to  remind  us  that  man  cannot  live 
by  facts  alone,  and  that  a  nation  which  subsists 
purely  on  science  and  materialism  is  in  a  fair 
way  to  degeneration. 

It  was  impossible,  however,  to  convey  this 
view  to  the  England  of  the  eighteen-seventies. 
The  delightful  irony  of  Matthew  Arnold  and  ^ 
the  epigrammatic  taunts  of  Oscar  Wilde  were  U 
equally  ineffective.  In  addition,  of  course, 
the  development  of  art  was  hindered,  and  in  fact 
stopped  altogether,  by  the  absence  of  any  kind 
of  aristocratic  support.  The  Liberal,  or  rather 
the  profoundly  Christian  doctrine  of  equal  rights 
for  all,  naturally  tended  to  degrade  the  artist  to 
the  level  of  the  mob.  Where  a  few  people  of 
superior  culture  did  manage  to  keep  themselves 

155 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

above  the  level  of  the  middle  classes,  this  nation 
of  business  men  treated  them  all  alike  with 
good-humoured  contempt.  It  never  occurred 
to  them  that  there  might  be  different  types  of 
artists  or  philosophers,  that  some,  the  real 
artists,  might  be  induced  to  create  through  a 
superabundance  of  intellectual  vigour,  and  that 
others  might  be  induced  to  create  owing  to 
a  precisely  opposite  cause — intellectual  weak- 
ness, instability,  romanticism.  Distinctions  like 
these,  which  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  make 
when  treating  of  any  artistic  period,  were  much 
too  subtle  for  the  comprehension  of  the  stolid 
British  bourgeoisie. 

I  have  referred  to  the  malign  influence 
exercised  on  the  artistic  imagination  by  the 
scientific  atheism  of  the  time  ;  but  it  must  not 
be  supposed  from  this  that  religion  as  such 
had  been  driven  away  altogether.  There  was 
religion  of  a  kind,  namely,  the  religion  pro- 
fessed by  those  who  called  themselves  Non- 
conformists or  Dissenters  or  Low-Church  people. 
Speaking  of  them  generally,  we  might  perhaps 
call  them  Puritans,  and  the  Puritan  type  of 
mind  was  common  to  many  people  who  did  not 
profess  any  of  the  Puritan  religions.  It  is  quite 
obvious,  for  example,  that  Darwin  and  Spencer, 

156 


GEORGE    BERNARD   SHAW 

whatever  their  views  on  a  higher  power 
might  have  been,  were  actuated  in  all  their 
conduct  by  Puritan  notions  of  morality,  and 
the  cardinal  defect  of  these  people  was  clearly 
pointed  out  by  Matthew  Arnold.  "  They  have 
developed  one  side  of  their  humanity  at  the 
expense  of  all  others,  and  have  become  in- 
complete and  mutilated  men  in  consequence. 
.  .  .  The  influence  of  the  English  race  towards 
moral  development  and  self-conquest  has  no- 
where so  powerfully  manifested  itself  as  in 
Puritanism.  Nowhere  has  Puritanism  found  so 
adequate  an  expression  as  in  the  religious 
organisation  of  the  Independents.  The  modern 
Independents  have  a  newspaper.  The  Non- 
conformist, written  with  great  sincerity  and 
ability.  The  motto,  the  standard,  the  pro- 
fession of  faith  which  this  organ  of  theirs  carries 
aloft  is  *  The  dissidence  of  Dissent  and  the 
Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion.' 
There  is  sweetness  and  light,  and  an  ideal  of 
complete  harmonious  human  perfection  !  ** 

The  religious  life  of  England,  indeed,  during 
the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
quite  as  sombre  as  at  any  other  time  in  the 
history  of  the  country,  and  when  we  come  to 
realise  what  it  actually  was  like  we  shall  find 

157 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

that  we  have  no  cause  to  rail  against  the  con- 
ventions of  the  early  Victorian  era. 

Apart  altogether  from  the  question  of  art 
we  find  that  Liberalism,  using  the  word  in  its 
nominal  political  sense,  was  beginning  to  have 
evil  effects  on  the  existence  of  the  lower  strata 
of  the  population.  Liberalism,  being  merely 
capitalism  in  politics,  was  gradually  tending 
to  crush  the  workman  for  the  benefit  of  the 
employer,  and  the  inception  of  the  trade  union 
movement  had  been  followed  in  many  in- 
dustrial districts  by  murderous  riots  and  strikes. 
Too  comfortable  to  realise  the  seriousness  of 
their  position,  capitalists  and  manufacturers 
were  sitting  on  the  edge  of  a  human  volcano, 
utterly  indifferent  to  the  violent  dissatisfaction 
which  was  beginning  to  seethe  among  the  work- 
men whom  they  were  so  cruelly  exploiting. 
True,  a  certain  number  of  the  doctrines  of 
Karl  Marx  were  already  beginning  to  spread  in 
the  Midlands  and  the  North  ;  but  the  Socialist 
of  these  days  was  regarded  as  a  mad  visionary, 
a  harmless  crank.  He  was  not  a  practical 
person  and  he  was,  as  a  rule,  not  respectable, 
and  two  more  severe  accusations  could  not  be 
made  against  any  man  by  the  bourgeois  mind 
of  the  period.     The  epithets  were  in  most  cases 

158 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

well  deserved  ;  but  the  Socialist,  however  mad, 
however  cranky,  and  however  harmless,  pos- 
sessed at  all  events  one  great  gift  which  was 
not  common  either  to  the  middle  or  to  the 
upper  classes,  viz.,  the  gift  of  imagination. 

Into  this  deadly  dull,  stupid,  philistine, 
materialistic  society,  George  Bernard  Shaw 
burst  in  the  late  seventies.  He  had  been  born 
in  Ireland,  but  he  was  not  a  Celt.  He  has 
himself  referred  to  his  nationality  by  saying, 
**  I  am  a  typical  Irishman,  my  family  came 
from  Yorkshire.''  Mr.  Shaw's  people,  in  other 
words,  had  nothing  in  common  with  the  imagin- 
ative and  poetic  Irish  of  the  West,  South,  and 
East ;  but  were  rather  connected  with  the 
materialistic  and  manufacturing  type  of  Irish- 
man to  be  found  chiefly  in  Ulster.  The  Celt 
has  all  the  sympathetic  feelings  for  humanity 
which  we  usually  find  developed  by  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church,  although  he  may  not  possess 
them  in  so  great  a  degree  as  his  French,  Spanish, 
or  Italian  brethren  in  the  faith.  They  are  too, 
for  the  most  part,  agriculturists,  and  this 
blending  of  humanity  with  primitive  nature 
produces  a  type  of  man  which  is  in  many 
respects  admirable.  The  opposite  type,  how- 
ever, to  which  Mr.  Shaw  belongs,  as  the  develop- 

159 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

ment  of  his  mind  obviously  shows,  was  by  no 
means  so  admirable.  This  latter  type  is  not 
concerned  with  nature  but  with  industrialism, 
and  where  religion  is  concerned  he  is  Noncon- 
formist and  Low-Church  to  a  degree  that  the 
average  Englishman  will  not  readily  be  able  to 
conceive.  He  is  perfectly  rabid  in  his  bigotry, 
and  all  the  qualities  represented  by  the  Catholic 
Church  are  anathema  to  him. 

Mr.  Shaw  himself  did  not  share  the  views  com- 
mon to  his  own  class,  and  indeed  he  has  often 
uttered  a  violent  protest  against  many  of  them  ; 
but  in  endeavouring  to  avoid  the  errors  of  a 
deadening  religion  he  fell  into  the  errors,  which 
he  vainly  tried  to  avoid,  of  an  equally  deadening 
science.  Even  when  he  came  to  London  in  his 
early  twenties  he  was  a  man  of  wide  reading, 
and  everything  that  he  had  seen,  heard,  or  read 
tended  to  make  him  a  revolutionary  and  re- 
former. The  first  question,  however,  which 
the  Continental  philosopher  will  ask  in  con- 
nection with  any  reformer  is.  Is  he  a  reformer 
from  strength  or  from  weakness  ?  In  other 
words.  Has  he  such  a  superabundance  of 
intellectual  vitality,  such  a  long  line  of  artistic 
ancestors,  such  a  clear  insight  into  the  problems 
that  confront  us,  that  he  can  lay  down  any 

i6o 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

general  principles,  the  application  of  which  will 
lead  to  the  solution  ?  Or  is  he,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  reformer  merely  because  of  intellectual 
weakness,  because  he  has  not  attained  to  spiritual 
harmony  ;  and  does  he  take  up  reforming  simply 
to  ease  his  conscience,  in  exactly  the  same 
way  as  society  ladies  go  in  for  ''  slumming  " 
to  ease  their  consciences,  or  as  the  modern 
Liberal  capitalists  cause  measures  like  National 
Insurance  and  Old  Age  Pensions  to  be  passed 
for  the  same  reason  ?  It  is  to  be  feared  that 
there  is  only  one  answer  in  Mr.  Shaw's  case. 
Whatever  induced  him  to  take  up  reforming, 
it  was  certainly  not  intellectual  strength.  We 
can  judge  his  nature  with  tolerable  accuracy 
from  many  of  the  characters  which  appear  in 
his  own  works — as  he  himself  says  in  his  preface 
to  Man  and  Superman,  the  author  must  be 
judged  by  those  characters  into  which  he  puts 
what  he  knows  of  himself,  his  Hamlets  and 
Macbeths  and  Lears  and  Prosperos.  And  in 
the  same  preface  Mr.  Shaw  has  unwittingly 
given  us  yet  another  key  to  his  whole  char- 
acter, when  he  says,  ''  This  is  the  true  joy 
in  life,  the  being  used  for  a  purpose  recog- 
nised by  yourself  as  a  mighty  one  ;  the  being 
thoroughly  worn  out  before  you  are  thrown 
II  ^6i 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

on  the  scrap-heap  ;  the  being  a  force  of  nature 
instead  of  a  feverish,  selfish  little  clod  of  ail- 
ments and  grievances,  complaining  that  the 
world  will  not  devote  itself  to  making  you 
happy."  This  indeed  is  the  true  fundamental 
Shaw  :  all  his  life  he  has  lacked  happiness  ;  that 
is  to  say,  he  lacked  artistic  harmony  and  unity, 
and  however  much  his  works  may  interest  or 
amuse  us,  we,  as  artists,  are  faced  with  the  fact 
that  there  is  an  inartistic  bitterness  and  rest- 
lessness in  almost  every  one  of  Shaw's  char- 
acters, in  almost  every  page  he  wrote. 

I  have  referred  earlier  in  this  book  to  the 
necessity  for  a  sound  philosophical  foundation, 
a  foundation  which  is  necessary  to  the  artist 
before  he  can  create,  just  as  it  is  necessary  to  a 
reformer  before  he  can  reform.  It  is  unfortunate 
that  Mr.  Shaw  has  never  stood  upon  such  a 
foundation  as  this,  and  all  his  attempts  at  re- 
forming have  been  in  reality  attempts  to  find  such 
\\  a  foundation.  He  has  admitted  that  he  owes  a 
\  \  great  deal  to  Samuel  Butler,  and  he  has  also 
acknowledged  his  obligations  to  Schopenhauer. 
And  on  page  12  of  The  Quintessence  of  Ihsenism, 
we  find  a  remarkable  footnote  which  ends  thus  : 

Schopenhauer's  philosophy,  like  that  of  all  pessi- 
mists, is  really  based  on  the  old  view  of  the  will  as 

162 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

original  sin,  and  on  the  1 750-1 850  view  that  the 
intellect  is  the  Divine  grace  that  is  to  save  us  from  it. 
It  is  as  well  to  warn  those  who  fancy  that  Schopen- 
hauerism  is  one  and  indivisible,  that  acceptance  of  its 
metaphysics  by  no  means  involves  endorsement  of 
its  philosophy. 

This  was  written  in  1891,  and  I  should  be 
inclined  to  explain  Mr.  Shaw's  hedging  in  regard 
to  Schopenhauer's  philosophy  by  the  fact  that 
Nietzsche  was  just  then  beginning  to  be  known 
in  England. 

If  Mr.  Shaw  had  no  philosophical  foundation, 
however,  his  wide  reading,  and  particularly  his 
reading  in  modern  German  literature,  had 
given  him  what  might  have  been  regarded 
from  the  artistic  standpoint  as  at  least  one 
advantage  over  his  competitors  in  journalism 
and  literature — he  had  a  great  many  new 
ideas  on  music,  philosophy,  art,  and  the  stage, 
and  he  had  in  addition  what  we  may  call,  for 
want  of  a  better  term,  an  open  mind.  He  was 
bound  down  to  no  particular  tradition  in  art 
or  science,  and,  in  contradistinction  to  nearly 
every  other  English  author  and  journalist,  he 
had  a  warm  welcome  for  every  new  point  of 
view,  every  new  idea  he  came  across,  and 
the  more  revolutionary  the  point  of  view  or 
the  idea  the  more  gladly   he  welcomed  it.     It 

163 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

is  true  that  many  of  the  ideas  which  Mr.  Shaw 
took  up  were  perfectly  worthless,  and  that 
there  were  many  among  them  which  he  mis- 
understood ;  but,  to  quote  the  old  proverb, 
*'  in  the  land  of  the  blind  the  one-eyed  man 
is  king,''  and  Shaw,  who  enjoyed  playing  with 
new  ideas  of  all  sorts — good,  bad,  and  in- 
different— was  to  that  extent  superior  to  his 
confreres,  who  could  not  stand  new  ideas  at 
any  price  and  treated  them  with  all  the  con- 
tempt the  business  man  bestowed  upon  the 
artist.  From  about  1880  onwards,  therefore, 
when  nearly  every  other  writer  in  England 
was  content  to  remain  in  the  old  rut,  Shaw  was 
pouring  forth  new  ideas  about  economics, 
marriage,  the  status  of  women,  sex,  divorce, 
eugenics,  the  endowment  of  motherhood,  and 
numerous  other  things.  At  a  time  when 
psychological  knowledge  was  not  applied  in 
England,  and  when  indeed  psychology  itself 
was  not  appreciated  at  its  proper  value,  no  one 
could  discern  the  intense  bitterness  underlying 
Shaw's  wit.  His  style  w^as  obviously  forcible 
and  pointed  to  an  extraordinary  degree  ;  but 
no  one  observed  that  it  was  the  style  of  a  man 
whom  bitterness,  disappointment,  and  con- 
tempt for  his  fellow-creatures  had  almost 
164 


GEORGE    BERNARD   SHAW 

thrown  into  a  fit  of  intellectual  hysteria.  No 
wonder  he  refers  to  himself  as  a  ''  feverish  little 
clod  of  ailments  and  grievances." 

Mr.  Shaw's  ideas,  however — although  most 
of  them  were  compounded  from  a  jumble  of 
Nietzsche,  Schopenhauer,  and  Samuel  Butler — 
soon  attracted  the  attention  of  those  who 
professed  to  be  intellectuals.  It  is  no  wonder, 
then,  that  in  1884  we  find  him  playing  a  pro- 
minent part  in  the  development  of  the  Fabian 
Society,  and  eagerly  contributing  to  the  series 
of  tracts  issued  from  that  time  forward  by 
this  well-known  organisation. 

In  spite  of  all  Mr.  Shaw's  essays  on  music 
and  the  drama,  however,  the  bent  of  his  mind 
was  never  imaginative  but  always  scientific. 
This  can  clearly  be  seen  in  the  tracts  which  he 
wrote  for  the  Fabian  Society  and  in  the  papers 
which  he  contributed  to  the  series  of  Fabian 
Essays  which  he  edited  in  1889.  These  essays 
dealt  with  the  basis  of  Socialism — itself  a 
scientific  and  not  an  imaginative  subject — 
and  Mr.  Shaw  chose  to  deal  with  the  out-and-out 
economic  side  of  Socialism.  One  of  his  essays 
treats  of  rent,  the  cost  of  production,  wages, 
and  the  sale  of  labour,  while  the  other,  though 
nominally  of  an  historical  nature,  will  be  found 

165 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

on   examination   to   be   more   concerned   with 
economics  than  with  history. 

Of  the  novels  which  Mr.  Shaw  published 
between  1879  and  1883,  Cashel  Byron's  Pro- 
fession is  probably  the  best,  and  in  it  of  course 
the  struggling,  pugnacious,  restless,  bitter,  and 
withal  cool  and  logical  Cashel  Byron  is  Mr. 
Shaw  himself.  I  do  not  know  whether  Mr. 
Shaw  meant  to  depict  himself  in  this  way,  but 
the  fact  remains  that  he  has  done  so.  No  other 
boxer,  and  indeed  no  other  man,  ever  thought 
or  talked  as  Cashel  did,  with  the  exception  of 
Mr.  Shaw  himself  and  those  of  his  disciples  who 
try  to  imitate  him.  Take  the  scene,  for  example, 
when  Cashel  Byron  calls  on  his  sweetheart, 
Lydia,  and  unexpectedly  meets  his  long-lost 
mother  : 

As  Lydia  offered  him  her  hand,  her  companion,  who 
had  surveyed  the  visitor  first  with  indi^erence  and 
then  with  incredulous  surprise,  exclaimed,  in  a  burst 
of  delighted  recognition,  like  a  child  finding  a  long 
lost  plaything,  "  My  darling  boy  !  "  And  going  to 
Cashel  with  the  grace  of  a  swan,  she  clasped  him  in 
her  arms.  In  acknowledgment  of  which,  he  thrust 
his  red  discomfited  face  over  her  shoulder ;  winked 
at  Lydia  with  his  tongue  in  his  cheek,  and  said : 

*'  This  is  what  you  may  call  the  Voice  of  Nature, 
and  no  mistake." 

*'  What  a  splendid  creature  you  are  !  "  said  Mrs. 
Byron,  holding  him  a  little  away  from  her,  the  better 

166 


GEORGE    BERNARD   SHAW 

to  admire  him.  ''  How  handsome  you  are,  you 
wretch  !  " 

"  How  d'ye  do.  Miss  Carew,*'  said  Cashel,  breaking 
loose,  and  turning  to  Lydia.  ''  Never  mind  her  :  it's 
only  my  mother.  At  least,"  he  added,  as  if  correcting 
himself,  *'  shes  my  mamma." 

*'  And  where  have  you  come  from  ?  Where  have 
you  been  ?  Do  you  know  that  I  have  not  seen  you 
for  seven  years,  you  unnatural  boy  ?  Think  of  his 
being  my  son.  Miss  Carew  !  Give  me  another  kiss, 
my  own,"  she  continued,  grasping  his  arm  affection- 
ately.    "  What  a  muscular  creature  you  are  !  " 

**  Kiss  away  as  much  as  you  like,"  said  Cashel, 
struggling  with  the  old  schoolboy  sullenness  as  it 
returned  oppressively  upon  him.  "  I  suppose  youre 
well.     You  look  right  enough." 

**  Yes,"  she  said  mockingly,  beginning  to  despise 
him  for  his  inability  to  act  up  to  her  in  this  thrilling 
scene  :  "I  am  right  enough.  Your  language  is  as 
refined  as  ever.  And  why  do  you  get  your  hair 
cropped  close  like  that  ?  You  must  let  it  grow, 
and " 

"  Now  look  here,"  said  Cashel,  stopping  her  hand 
neatly  as  she  raised  it  to  re-arrange  his  locks.  **  You 
just  drop  it,  or  I'll  walk  out  at  that  door,  and  you 
wont  see  me  again  for  another  seven  years.  You  can 
either  take  me  as  you  find  me,  or  let  me  alone.  If 
you  want  to  know  the  reason  for  my  wearing  my  hair 
short,  you'll  find  it  in  the  histories  of  Absalom  and 
Don  Mendoza.     Now  are  you  any  the  wiser  ?  " 

Mrs.  Byron  became  a  shade  colder.  '*  Indeed  !  " 
she  said.     **  Just  the  same  still,  Cashel  ?  " 

"  Just  the  same,  both  one  and  other  of  us,'*  he 
replied.  "  Before  you  spoke  six  words,  I  felt  as  if 
we'd  parted  only  yesterday." 

"  I  am  rather  taken  aback  by  the  success  of  my 
experiment,"  interposed  Lydia.     '*  I  invited  you  pur- 

167 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

posely  to  meet  one  another.  The  resemblance  be- 
tween you  led  me  to  suspect  the  truth ;  and  my 
suspicion  was  confirmed  by  the  account  Mr.  Byron 
gave  me  of  his  adventures." 

Mrs.  Byron's  vanity  was  touched.  "  Is  he  like 
me  ?  "  she  said,  scanning  his  features.  He,  without 
heeding  her,  said  to  Lydia  with  undisguised  morti- 
fication : 

'*  And  was  that  why  you  sent  for  me  ?  " 

'*  Are  you  disappointed  ?  "  said  Lydia. 

"  He  is  not  in  the  least  glad  to  see  me,"  said  Mrs. 
Byron  plaintively.     *'  He  has  no  heart." 

"  Now  she'll  go  on  for  the  next  hour,"  said  Cashel, 
looking  to  Lydia,  obviously  because  he  found  it 
much  pleasanter  than  looking  at  his  mother.  "  No 
matter :  if  you  dont  care,  I  dont.  So  fire  away, 
mamma." 

Cashel  Byron  answering  his  mother  is  Mr. 
Shaw  answering  a  heckler  after  delivering  a 
lecture. 

Even  in  this,  one  of  his  earliest  books,  however, 
Mr.  Shaw  showed  a  side  of  his  character  to 
which  Mr.  Chesterton  was,  I  think,  the  first 
to  draw  attention  publicly,  viz.,  the  extreme 
Puritanism  of  this  ardent  social  revolutionary. 
Cashel  Byron  has  been  a  prize-fighter  from  his 
teens  and  is  idealised  by  all  the  women  who 
meet  him.  We  are  nevertheless  distinctly  given 
to  understand  that  he  has  never  had  any  sexual 
intercourse  until  his  marriage  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five  or  so.     The  truth  is,  as  Dr.  Levy 

i68 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

pointed  out  in  Volume  VII  of  The  New  Age, 
Mr.  Shaw  is  not  exactly  an  ordinary  flesh-and- 
blood  man.  His  intellectual  descent  may  be 
traced  back  to  Kant,  via  Ibsen,  Schopenhauer, 
and  Hegel ;  and  Kant,  above  all,  was  a  truly 
Christian  philosopher  in  his  contempt  for  the 
body.  In  spite  of  some  of  Mr.  Shawns  diatribes 
against  the  reason,  this  is  a  contempt  which 
he  seems  fully  to  share.  Its  effect  may  be 
noted  above  all  when  we  consider  the  heroines 
in  Mr.  Shaw's  dramas,  or  indeed  when  we  con- 
sider even  the  heroes  in  them.  They  are  not 
ordinary  flesh-and-blood  men  and  women  ;  but 
disputants,  arguers,  dialecticians.  Sometimes 
their  conversation  is  witty,  as  in  parts  of  Man 
and  Superman  or  Getting  Married ;  at  other 
times,  as  in  Ccesar  and  Cleopatra  or  The  Showing- 
up  of  Blanco  Posnet,  it  is  tiresome  and  dull,  and 
in  such  a  case  the  reader  is  bored  to  extinction  ; 
for  there  is  as  a  rule  nothing  in  the  argument 
that  should  be  expounded  in  a  conversational 
form — we  are  often  reminded  of  the  very  worst 
things  in  Plato,  or  even  Fenelon*s  Dialogues  of 
the  Dead.  Mr.  Shaw's  Caesar  is  not,  of  course, 
a  calm  statesman  and  soldier,  but  simply  a  rather 
superior  and  somewhat  disputatious  member  of 
the  Fabian  Society,  and  his  Cleopatra  is  merely 

169 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Lydia    Carew   or   Ann   Whitefield   in   another 
guise. 

In  the  late  eighties  Mr.  Shaw  appears  to  have 
confined  himself  principally  to  writing  Fabian 
tracts.  In  1891,  however,  appeared  his  first  im- 
portant book — his  most  important  production, 
indeed,  with  the  exception  of  Man  and  Super- 
man. I  refer,  of  course,  to  The  Quintessence  of 
Ihsenism,  concerning  which  it  has  been  rather 
obviously  remarked  that  it  is  merely  the  quint- 
essence of  Shaw.  Nominally  an  exposition  of 
Ibsen's  ideas,  it  contains  many  acute  remarks 
on  all  sorts  of  subjects,  from  the  establishment, 
of  a  national  theatre  to  the  status  of  women 
and  annual  parliaments.  It  is  a  very  compact 
and  well-written  volume  with  some  provocative 
remark  in  nearly  every  paragraph.  Conceive, 
if  you  can,  what  the  British  public  of  1891  was 
likely  to  think  of  the  following  : 

The  domestic  career  is  no  more  natural  to  all  women 
than  the  military  career  is  natural  to  all  men ;  al- 
though it  may  be  necessary  that  every  able-bodied 
woman  should  be  called  on  to  risk  her  life  in  childbed 
just  as  it  may  be  necessary  that  every  man  should 
be  called  on  to  risk  his  life  in  the  battlefield.  It  is 
of  course  quite  true  that  the  majority  of  women  are 
kind  to  children,  and  prefer  their  own  to  other  people's. 
But  exactly  the  same  thing  is  true  of  the  majority  of 
men,   who   nevertheless   do   not   consider   that   their 

170 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

proper  sphere  is  the  nursery.  The  case  may  be 
illustrated  more  grotesquely  by  the  fact  that  the 
majority  of  women  who  have  dogs  are  kind  to  them, 
and  prefer  their  own  dogs  to  other  people's  ;  yet  it  is 
not  proposed  that  women  should  restrict  their  activities 
to  the  rearing  of  puppies.  If  we  have  come  to  think 
that  the  nursery  and  the  kitchen  are  the  natural 
sphere  of  a  woman,  we  have  done  so  exactly  as  English 
children  come  to  think  that  a  cage  is  the  natural 
sphere  of  a  parrot — because  they  have  never  seen 
one  anywhere  else.  No  doubt  there  are  philistine 
parrots  who  agree  with  their  owners  that  it  is  better 
to  be  in  a  cage  than  out,  so  long  as  there  is  plenty  of 
hempseed  and  Indian  corn  there.  There  may  even 
be  idealist  parrots  who  persuade  themselves  that  the 
mission  of  a  parrot  is  to  minister  to  the  happiness  of 
a  private  family  by  whistling  and  saying  "  Pretty 
Polly,"  and  that  it  is  in  the  sacrifice  of  its  liberty  to 
this  altruistic  pursuit  that  a  true  parrot  finds  the 
supreme  satisfaction  of  its  soul.  I  will  not  go  so  far 
as  to  afhrm  that  there  are  theological  parrots  who  are 
convinced  that  imprisonment  is  the  will  of  God  be- 
cause it  is  unpleasant ;  but  I  am  confident  that  there 
are  rationalist  parrots  who  can  demonstrate  that  it 
would  be  a  cruel  kindness  to  let  a  parrot  out  to  fall 
a  prey  to  cats,  or  at  least  to  forget  its  accomplishments 
and  coarsen  its  naturally  delicate  fibres  in  an  un- 
protected struggle  for  existence.  Still,  the  only 
parrot  a  free-souled  person  can  sympathise  with  is 
the  one  that  insists  on  being  let  out  as  the  first  con- 
dition of  its  making  itself  agreeable.  A  selfish  bird, 
you  may  say  :  one  that  puts  its  own  gratification 
before  that  of  the  family  which  is  so  fond  of  it — 
before  even  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest 
number  :  one  that,  in  aping  the  independent  spirit 
of  a  man,  has  unparroted  itself  and  become  a  creature 
that  has  neither  the  home-loving  nature  of  a  bird 

171 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

nor  the  strength  and  enterprise  of  a  mastiff.  All 
the  same,  you  respect  that  parrot  in  spite  of  your 
conclusive  reasoning  ;  and  if  it  persists,  you  will  have 
either  to  let  it  out  or  kill  it. 


Largely  through  the  influence  of  Mr.  Shaw 
himself,  ideas  like  these  have  now  become 
commonplace.  Whether  we  like  them  or  dis- 
approve of  them  entirely,  the  fact  remains  that 
we  have  at  all  events  got  used  to  them.  We 
can  conceive  the  reception  they  met  with  in 
the  nineties  when  we  read  Mr.  Shaw's  book  and 
find  out  what  some  of  the  dramatic  critics  of 
the  time  said  about  Ibsen.  In  dealing  with 
Ghosts,  for  example,  the  Daily  Telegraph  re- 
ferred to  it  as  '*  an  open  drain  ;  a  loathsome 
sore  unbandaged  ;  a  dirty  act  done  publicly  ; 
a  lazar  house  with  all  its  doors  and  windows 
open.'*  The  Daily  NenDS  called  it  **  a  most 
dismal  and  repulsive  production/'  while  Truth 
could  only  say  that  it  was  ''  garbage  and  offal,'' 
and  The  Era  criticised  it  as  being  **  as  foul 
and  filthy  a  concoction  as  has  ever  been  allowed 
to  disgrace  the  boards  of  an  English  theatre." 
As  for  Ibsen  himself,  the  Gentlewoman  typified 
the  English  Press  by  calling  him  '*  a  gloomy 
sort  of  ghoul,  bent  on  groping  for  horrors  by 
night,  and  blinking  like  a  stupid  old  owl  when 

172 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

the  warm  sunlight  of  the  best  of  life  dances 
into  his  wrinkled  eyes/'  The  Evening  Standard, 
again,  referred  to  Ibsen's  admirers  as  ''  lovers 
of  prurience  and  dabblers  in  impropriety,  who 
are  eager  to  gratify  their  illicit  tastes  under 
the  pretence  of  art/' 

As  we  are  not  here  concerned  with  Ibsen, 
I  should  not  think  it  worth  while  quoting  these 
out-of-date  criticisms  were  it  not  for  the  fact 
that  they  may  convey  to  the  present-day 
reader  some  notion  of  what  has  been  said  for  the 
last  twent}^  years  about  Mr.  Shaw  himself,  his 
plays,  and  his  followers.  Such  utterly  dis- 
proportionate criticism,  of  course,  does  more 
harm  to  its  authors  than  to  what  they  attack. 
Ibsen's  plays  would  have  been  sufficiently  con- 
demned if  the  critics  had  contented  themselves 
with  saying  that  they  were  ugly  and  con- 
sequently inartistic,  and  that  again  they  en^ 
deavoured  to  propagate  ideas  which  were  not 
suitable  for  representation  in  a  theatre-  I 
myself,  for  example,  would  never  condemn 
Mr.  Shaw's  plays  as  plays  by  saying  that  they 
would  undermine  the  foundations  of  morality 
and  lead  to  anarchy,  etc.  It  is  sufficient  to 
condemn  them  as  plays  by  saying  that  they 
are  dull  and  ugly,  and  they  are  dull  and  ugly 

173 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

in  the  first  place  because  they  endeavour  to 
propagate  an  idea,  or  to  show  up  some  social 
injustice,  which  would  be  better  propagated  or 
shown  up  in  the  form  of  a  Fabian  tract  or  an 
essay.  For  drama,  as  the  very  etymology  of 
the  word  implies,  is  the  representation  of  some 
phase  of  life  by  means  of  action,  and  Mr.  Shaw's 
argumentative  style  of  play,  in  the  second  place, 
tends  to  do  away  with  action  altogether.  There 
is  practically  no  action,  for  example,  in  Getting 
Married,  The  Doctor's  Dilemma,  or  The  Showing- 
up  of  Blanco  Posnet,  and  there  is  very  little 
indeed  in  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession.  In  short, 
that  which  makes  Mr.  Shaw  a  scientist  rather 
than  an  artist,  and  a  Puritan  rather  than  a 
lover  of  life,  likewise  affects  his  dramatic  con- 
struction, viz.,  the  economic  bent  of  his  mind. 
Mrs.  'Warren  becomes  a  prostitute  through 
economic  pressure,  and  a  passable  system  of 
economics  could  be  built  up  out  of  some  of  the 
suggestions  laid  down  in  the  conversations  in 
Getting  Married. 

In  the  eighteen-nineties,  as  at  the  present 
day  and  as  probably  will  always  be  the  case. 
Englishmen  will  be  tolerant  of  discussion  on 
almost  any  subject  except  anything  which 
may  tend  to  break  up  their  home  life  or  inter- 

.    174 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

fere  with  the  chastity  of  their  female  relatives. 
There  is  a  distinction  between  discussion  on 
this  topic  and  a  discussion  on  sexual  relations 
in  general.  In  Mr.  Wells's  novels,  for  example, 
such  as  the  scenes  between  Remington  and 
Isabel  in  The  New  Machiavelli,  the  averagg 
middle-class  Englishman  will  see  merely  a 
common  enough  fictitious  incident  which  may 
happen  to  any  lover,  and  accordingly  he  does 
not  object  to  Mr.  Wells's  novels,  even  though 
certain  library  censorship  committees  may  think 
that  he  does.  But  he  becomes  seriously  per- 
turbed when  he  finds  Mr.  Shaw  suggesting  that 
an  interest  in  children  is  not  necessarily  natural 
to  a  woman.  Another  quotation  which  I  ven- 
ture to  take  from  The  Quintessence  of  Ihsenism 
will,  I  think,  be  sufficient  to  show  the  sort  of 
thing  that  seriously  annoys  John  Bull : 

The  statement  that  Ibsen's  plays  have  an  immoral 
tendency  is,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  used,  quite 
true.  Immorality  does  not  necessarily  imply  mis- 
chievous conduct :  it  implies  conduct,  mischievous 
or  not,  which  does  not  conform  to  current  ideals. 
Since  Ibsen  has  devoted  himself  almost  entirely  to 
showing  that  the  spirit  or  will  of  Man  is  constantly 
outgrowing  his  ideals,  and  that  therefore  conformity 
to  them  is  constantly  producing  results  no  less  tragic 
than  those  which  follow  the  violation  of  ideals  which 
are  still  valid,  the  main  effect  of  his  plays  is  to  keep 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

before  the  public  the  importance  of  being  always 
prepared  to  act  immorally,  to  remind  men  that  they 
ought  to  be  as  careful  how  they  yield  to  a  temptation 
to  tell  the  truth  as  to  a  temptation  to  hold  their 
tongues,  and  to  urge  upon  women  that  the  desira- 
bility of  their  preserving  their  chastity  depends  just 
as  much  on  circumstances  as  the  desirability  of  taking 
^  cab  instead  of  walking.  .  .  .  There  can  be  no 
question  as  to  the  effect  likely  to  be  produced  on  an 
individual  by  his  conversion  from  the  ordinary  accept- 
ance of  current  ideals  as  safe  standards  of  conduct, 
to  the  vigilant  open-mindedness  of  Ibsen.  It  must  at 
once  greatly  deepen  the  sense  of  moral  responsibility. 
Before  conversion  the  individual  anticipates  nothing 
worse  in  the  way  of  examination  at  the  judgment 
bar  of  his  conscience  than  such  questions  as.  Have 
you  kept  the  Commandments  ?  Have  you  obeyed 
the  law  ?  Have  you  attended  church  regularly ; 
paid  your  rates  and  taxes  to  Caesar  ;  and  contributed, 
in  reason,  to  charitable  institutions  ?  It  may  be 
hard  to  do  all  these  things  ;  but  it  is  still  harder  not 
to  do  them,  as  our  ninety-nine  moral  cowards  in  the 
hundred  well  know.  And  even  a  scoundrel  can  do 
them  all  and  yet  live  a  worse  life  than  the  smuggler 
or  prostitute  who  must  answer  No  all  through  the 
catechism.  Substitute  for  such  a  technical  examina- 
tion one  in  which  the  whole  point  to  be  settled 
is.  Guilty  or  Not  Guilty  ? — one  in  which  there  is 
no  more  and  no  less  respect  for  chastity  than  for 
incontinence,  for  subordination  than  for  rebellion, 
for  legality  than  for  illegality,  for  piety  than  for 
blasphemy,  in  short,  for  the  standard  virtues  than 
for  the  standard  vices,  and  immediately,  instead 
of  lowering  the  moral  standard  by  relaxing  the 
tests  of  worth,  you  raise  it  by  increasing  their  strin- 
gency to  a  point  at  which  no  mere  Pharisaism  or 
moral  cowardice  can  pass  them.  Naturally  this  does 
176 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

not  please  the  Pharisee.  The  respectable  lady  of  the 
strictest  Christian  principles,  who  has  brought  up  her 
children  with  such  relentless  regard  to  their  ideal 
morality  that  if  they  have  any  spirit  left  in  them  by 
the  time  they  arrive  at  years  of  independence  they 
use  their  liberty  to  rush  deliriously  to  the  devil — 
this  unimpeachable  woman  has  always  felt  it  unjust 
that  the  respect  she  wins  should  be  accompanied  by 
deep-seated  detestation,  whilst  the  latest  spiritual 
heiress  of  Nell  Gwynne,  whom  no  respectable  person 
dare  bow  to  in  the  street,  is  a  popular  idol.  The  reason 
is — though  the  virtuous  lady  does  not  know  it — that 
Nell  Gwynne  is  a  better  woman  than  she ;  and  the 
abolition  of  the  idealist  test  which  brings  her  out  a 
worse  one,  and  its  replacement  by  the  realist  test 
which  would  show  the  true  relation  between  them, 
would  be  a  most  desirable  step  forward  in  public 
morals,  especially  as  it  would  act  impartially,  and  set 
the  good  side  of  the  Pharisee  above  the  bad  side  of 
the  Bohemian  as  ruthlessly  as  it  would  set  the  good 
side  of  the  Bohemian  above  the  bad  side  of  the  Pharisee. 

I  pass  over  The  Perfect  Wagnerite,  the  Plays 
Pleasant  and  Unpleasant,  and  the  Plays  for 
Puritans,  since  it  is  sufficient  for  the  purpose  of 
Mr.  Shaw's  psychology  to  examine  Man  and 
Superman,  Getting  Married,  and  The  Showing- 
up  of  Blanco  Posnet.  If  by  a  play  we  mean,  with 
Aristotle,  something  that  must  have  a  beginning, 
a  middle,  and  an  end,  we  must,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  these  productions 
of  Mr.  Shaw's  are  not  plays  at  all  in  the  strictly 
dramatic  sense  of  the  word.  They  are  a  series 
12  177 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

of  conversations.  In  the  latter  two  no  particu- 
lar problem  is  solved  ;  but  any  number  of 
problems  are  discussed.  In  Man  and  Superman 
we  get  nothing  but  Mr.  Shawns  conception  of 
something  which  he  calls  the  "  Life  Force."  It 
was  merely  the  word  '*  Superman/*  of  course, 
which  connected  Shaw  with  Nietzsche,  for 
otherwise  there  is  nothing  in  common  to  them. 
A  German  critic  indeed,  Julius  Bab,  has  pointed 
out  that  Shaw  is  simply  the  Anglo-Saxon 
counterpart  of  the  Russian  Tolstoy.  "  Are 
they  not  both  enemies  of  Shakespeare  ?  '* 
asks  Mr.  Bab.  "  Is  it  not  clear  that  there  is 
no  real  difference  between  the  two,  and  that 
only  the  greater  facility  of  the  Celt,  and  his 
stronger,  freer  Western  intelligence  separate  the 
London  playwright  from  the  Slavonic  preacher 
of  repentance  ? ''  There  is  much  more  pro- 
fundity in  a  criticism  like  this  than  in  the 
loose  assertions  which  have  often  been  made 
that  Shaw  merely  took  Nietzsche's  philosophy 
and  adapted  it  for  the  British  public.  In  the 
article  in  Volume  VII  of  The  New  Age  to  which 
I  have  already  referred.  Dr.  Oscar  Levy  points 
out  that  on  the  contrary  it  is  precisely  against 
persons  of  the  type  of  Mr.  Shaw  that  Nietzsche 
wrote  his  books.  Shaw  glories  in  being  a 
178 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

heretic,  a  revolutionary,  a  destroyer.  Nietzsche, 
who  had  all  the  artist's  reverence  for  culture 
and  tradition,  was  of  a  diametrically  opposite 
temperament.  Shaw  declaimed  against  the 
current  morality  of  his  time,  but  all  the  prin- 
ciples expressed  in  his  public  works  nevertheless 
show  that  his  tendency  is  to  re-establish  in 
another  form  the  very  morality  against  which 
he  declaims.  Our  marriage  and  divorce  laws 
may  be  bad,  and  our  distribution  of  wealth 
may  be  absurd,  but  we  have  yet  to  learn  that 
we  should  be  better  off  if  our  present  arrange- 
ments were  superseded  by  the  Fabian  State. 
We  cannot,  of  course,  hold  Mr.  Shaw  responsible 
for  all  the  Fabian  tracts  that  have  been  issued  ; 
but  we  know  that  he  wrote  a  great  many  of 
the  earlier  ones,  and  there  are  at  least  two  to 
which  he  has  put  his  name,  The  Impossibility 
of  Anarchism  and  Socialism  for  Millionaires. 
It  is  perhaps  in  the  latter  that  Mr.  Shaw  ex- 
hibits the  most  inartistic  and  unphilosophical 
phase  of  his  mind.  Leaving  art  altogether  out  of 
the  question,  he  concentrates  his  attention  on 
economics  pure  and  simple,  or  rather  when  he 
deals  with  any  philosophic  or  artistic  matter 
the  reference  is  purely  incidental  and  the  higher 
subject   of  art   is  considered  from  the  lower 

179 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

point  of  view  of  economics.  It  may  perhaps 
have  occurred  to  him  that  we  could  get  rid  of 
much  of  our  industrial  poverty,  and  make  our 
population  more  agricultural  and  therefore 
healthier,  by  cutting  down  the  luxuries  and 
needs  which  have  risen  solely  through  the  spread 
of  industries  since  the  beginning  of  our  middle- 
class  industrial  rule  early  last  century  ;  but 
whether  this  view  occurred  to  Mr.  Shaw  or  not 
we  do  not  find  it  in  his  pamphlets  or  his  works. 
He  tells  us  somewhere  that  poverty  is  the  worst 
of  crimes,  and  he  concluded  his  Socialism  for 
Millionaires  by  deliberately  laying  down  the 
principle  that  the  man  who  makes  the  luxury  of 
yesterday  the  need  of  to-morrow  is  as  great  a 
benefactor  as  the  man  who  makes  two  ears  of 
wheat  grow  where  one  grew  before. 

Mr.  Shaw,  however,  cannot  altogether  be 
exonerated  from  responsibility  where  the  Fabian 
Society  is  concerned.  He  has  been  an  enthusi- 
astic member  of  the  body  for  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  century,  and  he  was  for  many  years 
an  active  member  of  the  executive.  He  must 
therefore  be  held  at  least  jointly  responsible 
for  the  pamphlets  issued  in  the  name  of  the 
Society.  These  include  several  by  Mr.  Sidney 
Webb,  whose  proposals  for  dealing  with  our 

i8o 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

sociological  problems  are  perhaps  the  most 
ghastly  ever  put  before  the  public.  Mr.  John 
Burns  summed  them  up  admirably  when  he 
said  that  they  would  turn  England  from  a  free 
country  into  a  servile  State — a  phrase  which, 
thanks  to  its  use  by  various  writers  of  The  New 
Age  and  by  Mr.  Belloc  in  The  Eye  Witness, 
promises  to  become  classic.  Mr.  Webb,  too, 
was  one  of  the  first  members  of  the  Fabian 
Society  and  was  for  a  long  time  associated 
with  Mr.  Shaw  on  the  executive. 

Although  Mr.  Shaw's  relations  with  the 
Fabian  Society  must  be  borne  in  mind  when  we 
consider  his  sociological  proposals,  the};^  are 
not  strictly  necessary,  perhaps,  for  a  thorough 
consideration  of  his  own  views.  It  is  true  that 
he  cannot  be  said  to  have  definitely  put  forward 
any  really  constructive  proposals  ;  but  from 
some  of  the  clever  epigrams  scattered  through 
his  plays,  and  also  from  The  Revolutionist's 
Handbook,  which  forms  the  appendix  to  Man 
and  Superman,  we  can  easily  judge  what  his 
constructive  proposals  would  be  like  if  he  ever 
brought  forward  any.  He  would  appear  to 
have  some  liking  for  the  community  established 
at  Oneida  Creek  by  certain  Perfectionist-Com- 
munists,  whose   object  was,   as  they  said,   to 

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ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

devote  themselves  exclusively  to  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  He  recognises  the 
truth  that  democracy  ''  cannot  rise  above  the 
level  of  the  human  material  of  which  its  votaries 
are  made/'  and  he  wishes  instead  for  a  de- 
mocracy of  supermen.  But  Shaw's  superman 
is  not  the  glowing  creation  of  an  artist-philo- 
sopher, as  Nietzsche's  superman  is.  Shaw's 
superman  is  some  one  who  has  developed  a 
large  proportion  of  Life  Force,  and  it  is  a  little 
difficult  at  first  to  discover  exactly  what  this 
Life  Force  consists  of.  Mr.  Chesterton  is  quite 
right  when  he  intimates  that  we  cannot  stop 
worshipping  God  to  worship  a  Life  Force 
instead,  as  if,  to  use  his  expression,  any  one 
could  worship  a  hyphen.  Shaw,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  writes  his  phrase  without  a  hyphen, 
but  Mr.  Chesterton's  objection  is  none  the  less 
apposite.  This  Life  Force  turns  out  in  the  end 
to  be  merely  brains.  In  Act  III  of  Man  and 
Superman,  when  Ana,  the  Devil,  the  Statue, 
and  Don  Juan  are  discussing  various  problems. 
Ana  inquires  whether  there  is  nothing  in 
heaven  but  contemplation.  Don  Juan  answers 
her  and  the  scene  proceeds  : 

Don  Juan:   In  the  heaven  I  seek,  no  other  joy. 
But  there  is  the  work  of  helping  Life  in  its  struggle 

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GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

Upward.  Think  of  how  it  wastes  and  scatters  itself, 
how  it  raises  up  obstacles  to  itself  and  destroys  itself 
in  its  ignorance  and  blindness.  It  needs  a  brain, 
this  irresistible  force,  lest  in  its  ignorance  it  should 
resist  itself.  What  a  piece  of  work  is  man  !  says 
the  poet.  Yes ;  but  what  a  blunderer !  Here  is 
the  highest  miracle  of  organisation  yet  attained  by 
life,  the  most  intensely  alive  thing  that  exists,  the 
most  conscious  of  all  the  organisms ;  and  yet,  how 
wretched  are  his  brains !  Stupidity  made  sordid 
and  cruel  by  the  realities  learnt  from  toil  and 
poverty  :  Imagination  resolved  to  starve  sooner  than 
face  these  realities,  piling  up  illusions  to  hide  them, 
and  calling  itself  cleverness,  genius  !  And  each  ac- 
cusing the  other  of  its  own  defect :  Stupidity  accus- 
ing Imagination  of  folly,  and  Imagination  accusing 
Stupidity  of  ignorance :  whereas,  alas !  Stupidity 
has  all  the  knowledge,  and  Imagination  all  the  in- 
telligence. 

The  Devil  :  And  a  pretty  kettle  of  fish  they  make 
of  it  between  them.  Did  I  not  say,  when  I  was 
arranging  that  affair  of  Faust's,  that  all  Man's  reason 
has  done  for  him  is  to  make  him  beastlier  than  any 
beast  ?  One  splendid  body  is  worth  the  brains  of  a 
hundred  dyspeptic,  flatulent  philosophers. 

Don  Juan:  You  forget  that  brainless  magnificence 
of  body  has  been  tried.  Things  immeasurably  greater 
than  man  in  every  respect  but  brain  have  existed  and 
perished.  The  megatherium,  the  ichthyosaurus  have 
paced  the  earth  with  seven-league  steps  and  hidden 
the  day  with  cloud- vast  wings.  Where  are  they  now  ? 
Fossils  in  museums,  and  so  few  and  imperfect  at  that, 
that  a  knuckle  bone  or  a  tooth  of  one  of  them  is  prized 
beyond  the  lives  of  a  thousand  soldiers.  These  things 
lived  and  wanted  to  live  ;  but  for  lack  of  brains  they 
did  not  know  how  to  carry  out  their  purpose,  and  so 
destroyed  themselves. 

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ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

At  this  point  the  Devil  breaks  in  with  a  wild 
tirade  against  the  bad  use  which  man  is  making 
of  his  brain  at  the  present  time.  He  objects 
to  modern  inventions,  especially  those  con- 
nected with  war,  and  holds  that  in  the  arts  of 
peace  man  is  a  bungler.  In  the  midst  of  the 
outburst,  however,  Bernard  Shaw  apparently 
makes  use  of  the  Devil  to  inform  us  that  man's 
morality  is  simply  gentility,  an  excuse  for 
consuming  without  producing — thereby  showing 
that  the  Devil  can  quote  economics  for  his 
purpose. 

Shaw's  enthusiasm  for  brains,  I  think,  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  as  a  Puritan  he  did  not  care  to 
trust  to  his  imagination  alone,  and  in  addition, 
being  a  man  of  discordant  instincts,  he  could 
make  no  allowance  for  the  will.  The  finer 
parts  of  the  mind  being  thus  thrown  aside, 
nothing  remained  but  brains ;  hence  brains 
were  glorified.  The  clever  anonymous  writer 
of  the  series  of  Unedited  Opinions  in  The  New 
Age  suggested  (in  Volume  IX,  No.  4)  that  Shaw 
found  himself  in  possession  of  more  brains  than 
most  people  and  shrewdly  announced  that 
there  was  nothing  like  leather.  As  the  same 
writer  pointed  out,  however,  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  nous,  which  is  even  more  important 

184 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

than  brains.  But  brains  to  Mr.  Shaw  mean 
rather  what  most  people  would  call  the  reason, 
or  rather  the  reasoning  powers,  dialectical 
ability — not  necessarily  originality,  and  far  less 
imagination.  His  plays  are  not  merely  con- 
versations, they  are  arid  intellectual  discussions. 
With  however  different  types  of  mind  he  may 
try  to  endow  his  characters,  they  all  have  this 
in  common,  that  they  reason  over  the  problem 
at  issue  in  precisely  the  same  dialectical  manner. 
The  men  and  women  in  the  plays  are  not  of  course 
ordinary  men  and  women,  and  they  are  not 
even  men  and  women  such  as  we  might  expect 
to  meet  at  the  Fabian  Society  ;  they  are  simply 
the  intellectual  children  of  Mr.  George  Bernard 
Shaw,  who  puts  his  own  opinions  into  the 
mouths  of  some,  and  the  conventional  dialectic 
objections  into  the  mouths  of  others.  He 
utilises  his  characters  to  set  off  some  sociological 
problem  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  Mr.  Wells 
uses  his  characters  to  set  off  some  possible  or 
probable  scientific  discovery.  We  cannot  ac- 
curately speak  of  a  plot  in  connection  with  Mr. 
Shaw*s  plays,  for  there  is  none  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  word  ;  but  we  may  say  that  the 
economic  or  political  question  is  the  main 
thing  and  that  the  characters  are  quite  sub- 

i8s 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

sidiary.  Only  a  trifling  difference  separates 
Violet  and  Ann  in  Man  and  Superman  from 
Edith  and  Lesbia  in  Getting  Married.  In  fact, 
it  would  not  matter  if  all  the  characters  in  Man 
and  Superman  made  their  appearance  in  Getting 
Married,  and  joined  in  the  discussion  of  the 
questions  at  issue  with  the  characters  around 
whom  Getting  Married  was  written.  I  have 
tried  this  experiment  myself,  and  its  complete 
success  shows  what  little  attention  Mr.  Shaw 
pays  to  the  technique  of  dramatic  construc- 
tion. 

I  have  said  that  Man  and  Superman  is  chiefly 
important  as  developing  the  philosophy  of  the 
Life  Force  ;  but  this  glorification  of  the  stock- 
exchange  type  of  mind  is  not  the  only  gem  in 
the  play.  There  are  several  outbursts  by  the 
hero,  John  Tanner,  and  John  Tanner  appears 
to  me  to  resemble  Mr.  Shaw  as  Mr.  Shaw  must 
have  talked  at  the  age  of  thirty  or  so,  and  as 
indeed  he  talks  and  writes  even  now.  Tanner 
holds  views  on  women,  love,  and  marriage 
like  those  to  be  met  with  in  The  Quintessence 
of  Ibsenism.  Incidentally  he  illustrates  Mr. 
Shaw's  Puritanism,  for  John  Tanner's  remarks 
on  the  development  of  the  moral  sense  are 
applicable  to  Mr.  Shaw  himself.     In  Act  I,  for 

i86 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

example,  he  addresses  Ann  on  the  subject,  and 
the  conversation  goes  on  as  follows  : 

Tanner:  What  does  the  beginning  of  manhood 
and  womanhood  mean  in  most  people's  mouths  ? 
You  know  :  it  means  the  beginning  of  love.  But 
love  began  long  before  that  for  me.  Love  played  its 
part  in  the  earliest  dreams  and  follies  and  romances 
I  can  remember — may  I  say  the  earliest  follies  and 
romances  we  can  remember  ? — though  we  did  not 
understand  it  at  the  time.  No  :  the  change  that 
came  to  me  was  the  birth  in  me  of  moral  passion  : 
and  I  declare  that  according  to  my  experience  moral 
passion  is  the  only  real  passion. 

Ann  :  All  passions  ought  to  be  moral,  Jack. 

Tanner  :  Ought !  Do  you  think  that  anything  is 
strong  enough  to  impose  oughts  on  a  passion  except 
a  stronger  passion  still  ? 

Ann  :  Our  moral  sense  controls  passion.  Jack. 
Don't  be  stupid. 

Tanner  :  Our  moral  sense  !  And  is  that  not  a 
passion  ?  Is  the  devil  to  have  all  the  passions  as 
well  as  all  the  good  tunes  ?  If  it  were  not  a  passion — 
if  it  were  not  the  mightiest  of  the  passions,  all  the 
other  passions  would  sweep  it  away  like  a  leaf  before 
a  hurricane.  It  is  the  birth  of  that  passion  that 
turns  a  child  into  a  man. 

Ann  :  There  are  other  passions,  Jack.  Very  strong 
ones. 

Tanner  :  All  the  other  passions  were  in  me  before  ; 
but  they  were  idle  and  aimless — mere  childish  greedi- 
nesses and  cruelties,  curiosities  and  fancies,  habits  and 
superstitions,  grotesque  and  ridiculous  to  the  mature 
intelligence.  When  they  suddenly  began  to  shine 
like  newly-lit  flames  it  was  by  no  light  of  their  own, 
but  by  the  radiance  of  the  dawning  moral  passion. 

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ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

That  passion  dignified  them,  gave  them  conscience 
and  meaning,  found  them  a  mob  of  appetites  and 
organized  them  into  an  army  of  purposes  and  prin- 
ciples.    My  soul  was  born  of  that  passion. 

This,  of  course,  is  pure  Lutheranism — dis- 
carding the  flesh  for  the  ecstasies  of  the  saint ; 
throwing  over  the  healthy  humanity  such  as 
we  find  in  the  Roman  Church  for  a  dry,  hard, 
northern  Calvinism.  This  sort  of  conversation 
continues  for  some  time,  and  then  we  have 
Ann  and  Tanner  brought  together  again.  Ann 
has  been  compelled  to  tell  a  lie  about  Tanner 
because,  as  she  explains  to  him  somewhat 
artlessly,  "  Mother  made  me,*'  whereupon  we 
have  a  few  remarks  from  Tanner  about  marriage 
and  the  family  : 

Tanner:  Is  that  any  reason  why  you  are  not  to 
call  your  soul  your  own  ?  Oh,  I  protest  against  this 
vile  abjection  of  youth  to  age  !  Look  at  fashionable 
society  as  you  know  it.  What  does  it  pretend  to  be  ? 
An  exquisite  dance  of  nymphs.  What  is  it  ?  A 
horrible  procession  of  wretched  girls,  each  in  the  claws 
of  a  cynical,  cunning,  avaricious,  disillusioned,  ignor- 
antly  experienced,  foul-minded  old  woman  whom  she 
calls  mother,  and  whose  duty  it  is  to  corrupt  her 
mind  and  sell  her  to  the  highest  bidder.  Why  do 
these  unhappy  slaves  marry  anybody,  however  old 
and  vile,  sooner  than  not  marry  at  all  ?  Because 
marriage  is  their  only  means  of  escape  from  these 
decrepit  friends  who  hide  their  selfish  ambitions,  their 

l88 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

jealous  hatred  of  the  young  rivals  who  have  sup- 
planted them,  under  the  mask  of  maternal  duty  and 
family  affection.  Such  things  are  abominable  :  the 
voice  of  nature  proclaims  for  the  daughter  a  father's 
care,  and  for  the  son  a  mother's.  The  law  for  father 
and  son  and  mother  and  daughter  is  not  the  law  of 
love  :  it  is  the  law  of  revolution,  of  emancipation,  of 
final  supersession  of  the  old  and  worn-out  by  the 
young  and  capable.  I  tell  you,  the  first  duty  of  man- 
hood and  womanhood  is  a  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence :  the  man  who  pleads  his  father's  authority  is 
no  man  :  the  woman  who  pleads  her  mother's  authority 
is  unfit  to  bear  citizens  to  a  free  people. 

This  rather  hysterical  emphasising  of  inde- 
pendence is,  it  is  greatly  to  be  feared,  quite 
typical  of  the  romanticist,  and  Mr.  Shaw, 
despite  his  wide  knowledge  and  open-hearted 
cynicism,  remains  a  romanticist.  I  do  not  call 
him  a  romanticist  merely  because  he  has 
always  taken  the  side  of  Wagner,  who  was  the 
romanticist  par  excellence  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, but  for  many  other  reasons  as  well.  It 
might  be  thought  that  in  The  Sanity  of  Art, 
Mr.  Shaw  had  sufficiently  demonstrated  his 
disbelief  in  certain  romantic  forms  of  art  and 
music  ;  but  it  would  be  found  that  he  does  not 
really  object  to  this.  He  does  not  like  Wagner's 
imitators,  but  he  likes  Wagner.  He  pours 
contempt  upon  the  followers  of  Monet,  but 
regards  Monet  as  an  artist — he  goes  so  far  in- 

189 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

deed  as  to  refer  to  Monet  and  Whistler  in  the 
same  paragraph  as  if  they  were  both  artists 
of  equal  eminence,  overlooking  the  fact  that 
Whistler  was  an  aristocratic  artist  to  his  finger- 
tips, and  that  Monet  was  a  blatant  idealist 
who  played,  roughly  speaking,  the  same  role 
in  painting  as  Hegel  or  Schelling  in  philosophy. 
Mr.  Shaw,  in  other  words,  is  so  much  interested 
in  any  dynamic  movement  in  culture  that  he 
does  not  pause  to  consider  whether  it  may  lead 
upward  or  downward.  It  is  creditable  to  Mr. 
Shaw  that  he  recognised  the  importance  of 
Nietzsche  and  discerned  the  weak  points  in 
Nordau  ;  but  it  is  not  so  creditable  that  he 
should  have  referred  in  The  Sanity  of  Art 
to  Nietzsche,  Wagner,  Ibsen,  Strauss,  and 
Monet  as  if  they  were  all  on  one  and  the  same 
artistic  plane. 

There  is  one  remarkable  feature  common  to 
Shaw  and  Wagner,  on  which  I  think  sufficient 
emphasis  has  not  yet  been  laid.  It  is  a  well- 
known  sociological  fact  that  the  romanticist  is 
distinguished  among  other  things  by  lack  of 
confidence  in  himself,  and  the  romantic  artist 
is  not  content  merely  to  write  a  play  or  an 
opera  and  leave  it  for  the  world  to  judge  ;  he 
is  anxious  to  explain  it  in  detail  so  that  the 

190 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

world  may  know  as  far  as  possible  exactly  what 
it  means.  This  characteristic  is  strongly  marked 
in  Wagner  and  Shaw.  In  this  country  Wagner 
is  not  very  well  known  as  an  author,  but  his 
works  nevertheless  fill  half  a  shelf,  and  most  of 
them  deal  with  his  own  musical  compositions, 
in  which  he  has  not  sufficient  confidence  to  let 
the  world  judge  them  on  their  own  merits.  We 
find  a  precisely  similar  characteristic  in  con- 
nection with  Mr.  Shaw's  plays.  Every  play  is 
preceded  by  a  long  preface,  the  perusal  of 
which  will  almost  exhaust  the  mind  of  the 
average  reader  before  he  comes  to  the  actual 
play.  Not  only  do  we  have  this  lengthy 
preface,  however,  but  also  in  the  play  itself 
stage  directions  and  sociological  observations 
which  continually  interrupt  the  slender  plot  or 
rather  the  series  of  conversations  of  which  Mr. 
Shaw's  plays  are  composed.  We  cannot  begin 
Man  and  Superman  until  we  read  a  page  and  a 
half  of  notes  about  Roebuck  Ramsden.  Then, 
after  two  lines  of  text,  we  are  interrupted  again 
while  we  read  half  a  page  descriptive  of  Octavius 
Robinson.  Four  pages  of  conversation  follow, 
and  we  are  once  more  interrupted  while  we  read 
three-quarters  of  a  page  about  John  Tanner. 
We  get  along  nicely  for  six  pages,  when  there 

191 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

is  another  break — ^two  pages  introducing  Miss 
Ann  Whitefield.  After  this  we  get  along  better, 
but  still  the  first  act  is  not  over  before  we  have 
to  read  nearly  half  a  page  in  order  that  we  may 
become  familiar  with  Violet.  Before  we  can 
get  on  with  Act  II  we  must  read  about  Straker, 
Tanner's  chauffeur,  and  we  have  not  pro- 
ceeded very  far  before  we  have  to  learn  some- 
thing about  Hector  Malone,  whose  character  is 
described  in  a  couple  of  pages.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  Act  III  we  have  four  pages  describing 
the  brigands  and  the  scenery,  and  interrup- 
tions of  a  similar  nature  are  continually  tripping 
us  until  we  reach  the  end  of  the  play.  And 
all  this  is  characteristic  not  only  of  Man  and 
Superman,  but  of  every  play  that  Mr.  Shaw  has 
written.  He  claims  descent  from  ^schylus, 
overlooking  the  fact  that  every  character  in 
the  whole  range  of  Greek  drama  was  allowed 
to  develop  naturally  on  the  stage,  and  that 
neither  -^schylus  himself  nor  his  immediate 
predecessors  and  followers  could  possibly  have 
understood  why  it  should  be  necessary  to  write 
a  preface  explaining  the  play,  and  a  series  of 
psychological  notes  within  the  text  of  the  play, 
as  well  as  the  actual  play  itself. 

Mr.  Shaw  has  laid  such  stress  on  art  that 

192 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

these  criticisms  are  naturally  directed  at  him 
from  an  artistic  standpoint ;  but  a  book  or 
any  other  work  of  art  can  only  last  if  it  is 
written  in  conformity  with  the  aesthetic  laws 
laid  down  for  works  of  art.  One  French  critic, 
M.  Augustin  Filon,  when  referring  to  Dickens, 
has  summed  up  this  matter  very  concisely  *  by 
saying  that  these  aesthetic  laws  are  instinctive 
in  the  born  writer,  and  that  they  impose 
themselves  in  cases  where  there  are  no  critics 
to  lay  them  down ;  and  he  summarises  a 
commonplace  of  modern  criticism  when  he  adds, 
"  These  laws  decide  the  relationship  between 
the  whole  and  the  parts,  between  the  thought 
and  the  expression." 

In  Mr.  Shaw's  plays,  as  in  Mr.  Wells's  novels, 
the  part  becomes  greater  than  the  whole,  and 
this  of  course  entirely  spoils  the  harmony  of 
his  plays  from  an  artistic  point  of  view.  The 
fact  that  they  are  inartistic,  however,  does  not 
necessarily  imply  that  they  are  not  popular, 
for  Man  and  Superman,  with  a  few  necessary 
alterations  for  production  on  the  stage,  has  had 
a  good  run,  as  also  had  the  sketch  How  he 
lied  to  her  Husband.  This  little  play,  by  the 
way,  has  been  produced  at  the  Palace  Theatre 

♦  Journal  des  Debuts,  January  24,  1912, 

13  193 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

of  Varieties — probably  the  best  music-hall  in 
London,  but  still  a  music-hall.  That  Mr. 
Shaw,  the  ardent  reformer,  revolutionary  Social- 
ist, and  would-be  artist,  should  have  had  a 
short  play  produced  on  the  boards  of  a  music- 
hall  is,  to  my  mind,  something  distinctly 
ironical. 

For  there  are,  of  course,  popular  elements  in 
most  of  Mr.  Shaw's  plays.  His  wit  is  bitter 
and  venomous,  and  might  perhaps  be  regarded 
as  a  kind  of  intellectual  red  pepper  or  vinegar 
to  help  down  the  stodginess  of  the  sociological 
or  economic  problem  around  which  the  play  is 
written.  This  is  an  artistic  point,  however, 
which  appeals  to  the  psychologist  and  not  to 
the  average  audience,  whether  in  a  music-hall 
or  a  theatre.  To  the  audience  the  wit  may 
be  ill-natured,  but  it  is  nevertheless  wit,  and  as 
such  they  appreciate  it — as  when,  for  instance, 
the  chief  brigand  introduces  himself  to  Tanner 
by  saying,  "  I  am  a  brigand  ;  I  live  by  robbing 
the  rich,''  and  Tanner  replies,  ''  I  am  a  gentle- 
man ;  I  live  by  robbing  the  poor."  This  is 
excellent  fooling,  and  Mr.  Shaw  gives  us  plenty 
of  it. 

Even  in  the  long  preface  to  Man  and  Super- 
man,  however,  and  in  the  play  itself,  Mr.  Shaw 

194 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

has  not  room  enough  to  develop  his  characters, 
or  rather  the  main  character,  John  Tanner. 
When  we  come  to  the  end  of  the  play  we  find 
that  we  have  still  to  read  an  appendix  called 
The  Revolutionist's  Handbook,  more  than  sixty 
pages  long.  This  appendix  is  divided  up  into 
sections,  each  containing  a  series  of  aphorisms 
on  such  subjects  as  good  breeding,  property, 
marriage,  prudery,  politics,  civilisation,  and  so 
forth.  It  is  supposed  to  be  written  by  John 
Tanner,  the  hero  of  the  play,  and  affords  us 
fairly  satisfactory  proof  that  John  Tanner  and 
George  Bernard  Shaw  are  one  and  the  same 
person.  It  is  gratifying  to  note  that  in  it 
Mr.  Shaw  does  not  join  in  the  common  yelp  for 
progress ;  neither  apparently  does  he  believe  in 
equality  as  the  word  is  understood  by  the 
average  democrat.  He  states  in  section  nine 
that  we  must  eliminate  the  yahoo  or  his  vote 
will  wreck  the  commonwealth,  and  he  recog- 
nises in  his  preface  to  the  appendix — for  Shaw 
can  write  nothing  without  putting  a  preface  to 
it — that  revolutions  have  never  lightened  the 
burden  of  tyranny  ;  they  have  only  shifted  it 
to  another  shoulder.  Having  recounted  numer- 
ous present-day  horrors,  Mr.  Shaw  plumps  for 
evolution  as  the  remedy — we  must,  he  says, 

195 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

replace  the  man  by  the  superman.  He  has, 
however,  no  definite  superman  in  view,  as 
Nietzsche  had*  Shaw's  superman  is  merely, 
so  far  as  we  can  gather,  to  have  better  health 
and  more  brains  than  the  average  man  of  the 
present  day,  and  this  being  will  be  arrived  at 
by  eugenics,  or  as  Mr.  Shaw  puts  it,  **  The 
only  fundamental  and  possible  Socialism  is  the 
socialisation  of  the  selective  breeding  of  man : 
in  other  terms  of  human  evolution.*'  This  is 
at  best  a  barren,  inartistic  remedy.  The  Revo- 
lutionist's Handbook,  like  most  of  Mr.  Shaw's 
plays,  merely  indicates  the  restlessness  of  his 
spirit,  his  full  appreciation  of  the  deplorable 
physical  conditions  amid  which  so  large  a 
proportion  of  our  population  lives,  and  the 
equally  deplorable  intellectual  conditions  pre- 
valent in  higher  circles.  It  shows,  too,  Mr. 
Shaw's  intense  desire  to  find  a  remedy  for  all 
this,  and  it  proves  definitely  his  incapacity  to 
do  so.  He  gives  one  the  feeling  that  his  rather 
boyish,  good-natured  heart  is  somewhere  near 
the  right  place,  but  that  his  mind  is  not  quite 
clear — in  fact,  to  put  it  a  little  more  harshly, 
that  his  mind  is  rather  muddled,  a  state  of 
things  by  no  means  uncommon  among  students 
of  Teutonic  philosophy.  Mr.  Shaw  doubtless 
196 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

knows  that  he  could  find  in  art  and  culture  a 
remedy  for  the  evils  he  recognises ;  but  unfor- 
tunately, as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  he  has 
got  into  the  habit  of  confusing  aristocratic  and 
democratic  art.  If  he  did  seek  to  find  the 
remedy  in  art  he  would  experience  great  diffi- 
culty in  deciding  which  art  leads  us  upwards, 
and  which  leads  us  downwards. 

In  The  Showing-up  of  Blanco  Posnet,  for  ex- 
ample— a  play  remarkable  for  its  preface, 
which  is  more  than  twice  as  long  as  the  play 
itself — Mr.  Shaw  gives  us  clearly  to  under- 
stand that  there  are  many  questions  dealing 
with  sexual  affairs  which  he  would  like  to  see 
**  discussed  *'  on  the  stage.  He  rails  against 
the  censorship  and  against  managers  also,  but 
he  does  not  recognise  that  whatever  the  reasons 
of  the  Censor  may  be,  he  is  much  more  right 
from  an  artistic  point  of  view  than  Mr.  Shaw  ; 
for  it  is  sufficient  to  condemn  the  latter's  long 
arguments  by  saying  that  art  cannot  discuss, 
that  drama  is  a  form  of  art,  and  that  the  stage 
cannot  be  used  for  the  sort  of  propaganda  work 
Mr.  Shaw  would  like  to  see  upon  it.  Mr. 
Shaw  objects  of  course  to  light,  frivolous  plays, 
which  treat  sexual  matters  with  a  certain 
amount    of    indelicacy  and    yet    at    the    same 

197 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

time  with  a  certain  good  humour.  Mr.  Shaw's 
Puritan  mind  is  shocked  by  this,  and  he  would 
like  to  see  such  performances  replaced  by 
dramas  of  the  type  of  Ibsen's  Hedda  Gabler, 
the  distinction  being  that  this  play  deals  with 
sex  very  seriously  indeed,  and  "  discusses  '*  it 
in  a  sufficient  measure  to  please,  I  am  sure, 
even  Mr.  Shaw.  Blanco  Posnet  itself,  of  course, 
is  not  a  sexual  play,  but  it  deals  with  a  religious 
subject — a  man  who  "  finds  God  '* — which  is 
equally  out  of  place  on  the  stage. 

Getting  Married  is  an  attack,  and  quite  a 
justifiable  one,  on  English  home  life  as  we 
know  it  at  the  present  day.  It  will  be  some 
time  before  Mr.  Shaw  is  forgiven  for  his  grim 
reference  to  a  certain  "  forgotten  conference  of 
married  men  ''  organised  by  the  late  Rev.  Mr. 
Hugh  Price  Hughes.  The  conference  assembled 
to  discuss  marriage,  but,  as  Mr.  Shaw  tells  us  : 

Nothing  came  of  it  (nor  indeed  could  have  come  of 
it  in  the  absence  of  women) ;  but  it  had  its  value  as 
giving  the  young  sociologists  present,  of  whom  I  was 
one,  an  authentic  notion  of  what  a  picked  audience  of 
respectable  men  understood  by  married  life.  It  was 
certainly  a  staggering  revelation.  Peter  the  Great 
would  have  been  shocked:  Byron  would  have  been 
horrified;  Don  Juan  would  havefled  from  the  conference 
into  a  monastery.  The  respectable  men  all  regarded 
the  marriage  ceremony  as  a  rite  which  absolved  them 

198 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

from  the  laws  of  health  and  temperance  ;  inaugurated 
a  lifelong  honeymoon  ;  and  placed  their  pleasures  on 
exactly  the  same  footing  as  their  prayers.  It  seemed 
entirely  proper  and  natural  to  them  that  out  of  every 
twenty-four  hours  of  their  lives  they  should  pass  eight 
shut  up  in  one  room  with  their  wives  alone,  and  this, 
not  birdhke,  for  the  mating  season,  but  all  the  year 
round  and  every  year.  How  they  settled  even  such 
minor  questions  as  to  which  party  should  decide 
whether  and  how  much  the  window  should  be  open 
and  how  many  blankets  should  be  on  the  bed,  and  at 
what  hour  they  should  go  to  bed  and  get  up  so  as 
to  avoid  disturbing  one  another's  sleep,  seemed  in- 
soluble questions  to  me.  But  the  members  of  the 
conference  did  not  seem  to  mind.  They  were  content 
to  have  the  whole  national  housing  problem  treated 
on  a  basis  of  one  room  for  two  people.  That  was  the 
essence  of  marriage  for  them. 

The  preface,  of  course,  contains  numerous 
references  to  small  families,  democracy  and 
politics,  motherhood,  monopoly,  old  maids,  the 
economic  position  of  women,  divorce,  white 
slavery,  and  so  on  and  so  on.  As  I  have 
said,  a  passable  system  of  economics  could  be 
drawn  up  from  some  of  the  play's  references  to 
women  in  relation  to  economics.  Many  points 
raised  by  the  married  state  are  of  course  well 
brought  out,  such  as  the  difficulty  of  obtaining 
a  divorce  without  collusion,  even  when  both 
parties  want  one,  the  fact  that  a  married  man 
is  responsible  for  libellous  statements  made  by 

199 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

his  wife,  and  the  fact  that  a  woman  must  remain 
faithful  to  her  husband  even  if  he  becomes 
insane  or  is  sentenced  to  a  long  term  of  im- 
prisonment. All  this,  however,  does  not  make 
Getting  Married  a  play,  and  still  less  an  artistic 
play.  To  begin  with,  the  stage  is  no  place  for 
the  consideration  of  any  of  the  problems  raised 
by  Mr.  Shaw,  and  in  the  second  place,  even 
if  it  were,  the  play  corresponds  to  no  rules  of 
dramatic  construction  either  ancient  or  modern. 
Indeed,  Mr.  Shaw  warns  us  about  this  at  the 
start,  for  he  tells  us  in  a  note  that  *'  the  cus- 
tomary division  into  acts  and  scenes  has  been 
disused,  and  a  return  made  to  unity  of  time  and 
place  as  observed  in  the  ancient  Greek  drama.'' 
We  can  only  say  in  reply  to  this  that  Mr.  Shaw 
must  have  entirely  misunderstood  the  rules  of 
Greek  drama  or  the  very  unities  he  refers  to. 
Aristotle,  who  was  the  first  critic  to  speak  of 
unities  at  all,  dealt  only  with  the  unity  of  action, 
and  gave  but  a  very  obscure  hint  about  unity 
of  time,  while  as  for  unity  of  place  he  said  not 
a  word  about  it.  It  is  customary,  of  course, 
for  superficial  writers  to  refer  to  Aristotle  and 
his  three  unities  ;  but  one  would  have  thought 
that  Mr.  Shaw  could  have  avoided  this  error. 
His  friend,  Mr.  Walkley,  could  have  told  him 

200 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

about  it.  In  other  words,  Mr.  Shaw  has  chosen 
a  subject  which  is  unfitted  for  the  stage,  and 
he  treats  of  it  with  an  entire  disregard  of  all 
dramatic  technique,  either  ancient  or  modern. 
It  is  true  that  the  play  did  have  a  short  run, 
but  the  experiment  could  hardly  be  called  a 
success. 

In  spite  of  these  criticisms,  however,  Mr. 
Shaw  must  have  his  due  ;  we  are  indebted  to 
him  for  a  good  deal.  When  I  referred  in  an 
earlier  chapter  to  the  influence  of  foreign  authors 
such  as  Verlaine,  Flaubert,  and  various  Russian 
writers  upon  English  literature,  I  had  Shaw 
chiefly  in  mind.  Whatever  else  he  may  have 
done,  let  it  at  least  be  said  to  his  credit  that 
he  made  English  critics  familiar  with  various 
aspects  of  Continental  thought,  and  the  acri- 
monious discussions  which  many  of  his  proteges 
raised  helped  things  to  sort  themselves  out  to 
some  extent.  It  was  chiefly  Shaw  who  made 
Ibsen,  Wagner,  Schopenhauer,  and  Nietzsche 
familiar  to  a  wide  circle,  together  with  many 
lesser  Continental  luminaries.  He  kept  himself 
well  in  touch  with  every  dynamic  movement 
abroad,  whether  in  painting,  music,  philosophy, 
or  economics.  It  is  my  personal  belief  that 
Mr.  Shaw  entirely  misunderstood  various  phases 

201 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

of  Nietzsche,  that  he  was  quite  capable  of 
setting  Wagner  and  Ibsen  on  a  level  with  him, 
and  that  he  failed  to  perceive  the  malign 
effect  that  the  Scandinavian  drama  was  likely 
to  exercise  on  art.  Nevertheless  the  fact  that 
he  could  take  an  interest  in  these  things  at  all 
sets  him  at  once  on  a  higher  level  than  his 
contemporaries.  It  is  true  that  Mr.  William 
Archer  and  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  also  became 
known  in  connection  with  Scandinavian 
writers,  and  the  name  of  Mr.  Archer  is  almost 
inseparable  from  that  of  Ibsen.  These  gentle- 
men, however,  estimable  though  their  merits 
are,  could  not  claim  anything  like  the  wide 
range  of  general  knowledge  possessed  by  Mr. 
Shaw.  They  have  written  well  on  Scandinavian 
literature,  and  there  is  some  originality  in  their 
own  creative  work,  but  they  never  wrote  so 
brilliantly  as  Mr.  Shaw,  and  they  have  never 
written  on  such  a  wide  range  of  subjects. 

There  are,  as  I  suggest  in  the  essay  in 
this  book  which  deals  with  Mr.  Wells,  two 
publics — one  the  small  artistic  public,  and  the 
other  the  great  uncultured  middle-class  public. 
Mr.  Wells,  in  my  opinion,  has  recognised  the 
distinction,  and  chosen  to  appeal  to  the  larger 
public  ;    but  Mr.  Shaw  looks  upon  the  whole 

202 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

mass  with  contempt.  In  his  work  he  has  paid 
no  particular  attention  to  form,  and  he  rains 
his  blows  with  equal  heartiness  upon  the  pure 
classical  artistic  tradition  and  the  heads  of  the 
Philistine  mob.  From  an  artistic  point  of 
view,  therefore,  we  cannot  award  Mr.  Shaw  any 
very  high  praise.  His  works,  I  think,  are 
destined  to  perish  before  the  century  is  up, 
partly  because  they  are  formless,  and  partly 
because  the  subjects  his  plays  deal  with  are 
ephemeral.  iEschylus,  Sophocles,  and  Aristo- 
phanes still  interest  us  because  their  plays  deal 
with  humanity,  and  as  the  nature  of  man  is 
unchanging  an  interval  of  one,  two,  three,  or 
four  thousand  years  makes  little  difference. 
Mr.  Shaw's  plays,  however,  do  not  deal  with 
humanity,  nor  even  with  one  phase  of  humanity, 
but  rather  with  the  political  or  sociological 
problems  of  one  phase  of  humanity — matters 
which  may  be  of  interest  to  two  or  three  genera- 
tions, but  hardly  to  two  or  three  score. 

Though  we  must  condemn  Mr.  Shaw  as  an 
artist,  however,  my  sympathies  are  entirely 
with  him  when  I  see  him  pitted  against  the 
dull,  stupid,  Philistine  British  public.  It  is  the 
business  of  a  cultured  man  to  be  able  to  appre- 
ciate new  points  of  view,  to  weigh  them  care- 

203 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

fully  and  to  decide  for  or  against ;  but  even 
Englishmen  who  pass  for  cultured  cannot  bring 
themselves  to  do  this — in  fact,  it  is  becoming 
year  by  year  a  matter  of  greater  difficulty  to 
induce  them  to  buy  or  to  read  books  at  all  ; 
even  the  upper  classes  and  noble  families  have 
begun  to  "  go  in  for  '*  trade,  and  too  much  com- 
mercialism is  sufficient  to  spoil  the  culture  of 
any  nation.  When  therefore  we  find  Mr.  Shaw 
attacking  modern  society,  or  distribution  of 
wealth,  or  marriage,  or  the  numerous  other 
things  with  which  he  has  dealt,  we  must  recog- 
nise that  his  remarks  are  often  fully  justified. 
As  a  dynamic  force  he  has  not  often  led  us  up- 
wards, and  when  he  has  done  so  he  has  not  led 
us  very  far  in  that  direction  ;  but  he  has  at  all 
events  not  stood  still.  Let  Mr.  G.  K.  Chester- 
ton add  a  final  word  in  his  favour : 

He  has  obliterated  the  mere  cynic  ;  he  has  been  so 
much  more  cynical  than  any  one  else  for  the  public 
good  that  no  one  has  dared  since  to  be  really  cynical 
for  anything  smaller.  The  Chinese  crackers  of  the 
frivolous  cynics  fail  to  excite  us  after  the  dynamite  of 
the  serious  and  aspiring  cynic.  Bernard  Shaw  and 
I  (who  are  growing  grey  together)  can  remember  an 
epoch  which  many  of  his  followers  do  not  know ;  an 
epoch  of  real  pessimism.  The  years  from  1885  to 
1898  were  like  the  hours  of  afternoon  in  a  rich  house 
with  large  rooms  ;  the  hours  before  teatime.  They 
believed  in  nothing  except  good  manners ;    and  the 

204 


GEORGE   BERNARD   SHAW 

essence  of  good  manners  is  to  conceal  a  yawn.  A 
yawn  may  be  defined  as  a  silent  yell.  The  power 
which  the  young  pessimist  of  that  time  showed  in  this 
direction  would  have  astonished  any  one  but  him  : 
he  yawned  so  wide  as  to  swallow  the  world  ;  he 
swallowed  the  world  like  an  unpleasant  pill  before 
retiring  to  eternal  rest.  Now  the  last  and  best  glory 
of  Shaw  is  that  in  the  circles  where  this  creature  was 
found,  he  is  not.  He  has  not  been  killed  (I  do  not 
know  exactly  why),  but  he  is  actually  turned  into  a 
Shaw  idealist.  This  is  no  exaggeration.  I  meet 
men,  who,  when  I  knew  them  in  1898,  were  just  a 
little  too  lazy  to  destroy  the  universe.  They  are  now 
conscious  of  not  being  quite  worthy  to  abolish  some 
prison  regulations.  This  destruction  and  conversion 
seems  to  me  the  mark  of  something  actually  great ;  it 
is  always  great  to  destroy  a  type  without  destroying 
a  man.  The  followers  of  Shaw  are  optimists  ;  some 
of  them  are  so  simple  as  even  to  use  the  word.  They 
are  sometimes  lather  pallid  optimists ;  frequently 
they  are  worried  optimists ;  occasionally,  to  tell  the 
truth,  rather  cross  optimists  :  but  they  are  not  pessi- 
mists ;  they  can  exult  though  they  cannot  laugh. 
He  has  at  least  withered  up  among  them  the  mere 
pose  of  impossibility.  Like  every  great  teacher,  he 
has  cursed  the  barren  fig-tree. 


;205 


CHAPTER    VII 

H.   G.   WELLS 

We  may,  if  we  choose,  consider  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells 
from  two  very  different  points  of  view.  At 
present  he  is  best  known  to  the  general  public 
as  a  writer  of  scientific  novels ;  but  from 
about  1904  to  1909  he  became  particularly 
well-known  in  political  and  sociological  circles 
as  one  of  the  reformers  of  our  social  system. 
His  name  during  this  time  was  associated  with 
the  Fabian  Society,  and  there  are  still  large 
masses  of  people,  wherever  English  is  read,  to 
whom  Mr.  Wells  the  sociologist  is  of  much  more 
importance  than  Mr.  Wells  the  novelist.  This 
is  at  least  one  resemblance  which  can  easily  be 
traced  between  Mr.  Wells  and  Mr.  Shaw.  Both 
of  them  aimed  at  literature,  both  of  them  were 
ardent  social  reformers,  and  both  of  them  spoiled 
their  literature  by  their  ideas  of  social  reform, 
and  could  not  carry  out  or  initiate  the  social  re- 
forms they  had  in  mind  owing  to  the  influence 
which  their  own  literary  ideas  had  upon  them. 
206 


H.    G.    WELLS 


The  artist  will  instinctively  feel  an  objection 
to  Mr.  Wells's  work  in  reading  through  his 
books,  and  it  is  an  objection  which  at  first  it  is 
not  easy  to  define.  For  Mr.  Wells  at  the  first 
reading  seems  to  display  much  constructive  ^ 
ability  in  his  work,  a  fine  technique,  and  imagi- 
nation of  quite  an  unusual  kind.  Scattered 
through  his  books,  too,  there  are  very  many  apt 
phrases,  and  occasional  deft  ''touches,'*  which, 
while  they  may  or  may  not  add  to  the  charm 
of  the  book,  are  at  all  events  clever — as,  for 
example,  when  a  character  in  Kipps  says  of 
the  lives  of  drapers'  assistants  :  ''I  tell  you 
we're  in  a  blessed  drain-pipe,  and  we've  got  to 
crawl  along  it  till  we  die  "  ;  or  that  little  scene 
in  Chapter  I  of  Tono  Bungay, 

Then  perhaps  Mrs.  Booch  would  produce  a  favourite 
piece  from  her  repertoire.  '*  The  evenings  are  drawing 
out  nicely,"  she  would  say,  or,  if  the  season  was 
decadent,  "  How  the  evenings  draw  in !  "  It  was  an 
invaluable  remark  to  her ;  I  do  not  know  how  she 
would  have  got  along  without  it.  My  mother,  who  sat 
with  her  back  to  the  window,  would  always  consider 
it  due  to  Mrs.  Booch  to  turn  about  and  regard  the 
evening  in  the  act  of  elongation  or  contraction,  which- 
ever phrase  it  might  be. 

Little  scenes  and  phrases  like  these  could  be 
matched  in  almost  any  book  by  Mr.  Wells ; 
but,  unfortunately,  they  remain  in  the  memory 

207 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

even  after  the  characters,  the  plot,   and  the 
general  aspect  of  the  story  have  been  forgotten. 
I  say  unfortunately,  because  it  cannot  be  too 
^  highly  emphasised  that  it  is  an  artistic  defect 
for  the  part  to  be  greater  than  the  whole.     If 
we  go  back  to  any  of  the   great  masters  of 
the   English  novel,  such  as  Henry  Fielding  or 
Samuel  Richardson,  we  shall,  I  think,  generally 
find  that  the  recollection  of  a  particular  scene 
or  phrase  recalls  to  us  the  whole  environment 
of  the  scene  or  the  phrase,  because  in  their 
works  the  part  does  not  become  greater  than 
the  whole,  and  the  artistic  harmony  and  unity 
of  the  work  are  preserved  throughout.     But 
scenes  and  phrases  in  Mr.  Wells's  works  are  very 
often  like  merely  superfluous  ornaments,  pieces 
of  mosaic  which  may  be  stuck  on  or  pulled  off 
at  will.     If  any  of  Mr.  Wells's  admirers  does 
me  the  honour  of  reading  these  lines,  he  may 
think  that  such  an  objection  is  a  purely  pedantic 
one.     But  it  is  not ;   it  merely  arises  from  the 
fundamental  distinction  between  what  is  art 
and  what  is  not  art.     Mr.  Wells  is  anything 
you  like — an  interesting  personality,  a  clever 
writer,  a  man  of  brilliant  scientific  imagination, 
an  ardent  social  reformer,  a  leader  of  English 
thought,  even — but  his  works  are  not  artistic 
208 


H.    G.    WELLS 


works ;  not  at  all  events  in  the  sense  in  which 
we  speak  of  the  works  of  a  novelist  like  Fielding 
as  artistic  works.  We  may,  if  we  like,  set 
them  on  a  very  much  inferior  plane — we  may 
describe  them  as  the  works  of  a  self-made 
artist. 

Not   merely  America  but  the  whole  world 
has  provided  us,  more  particularly  within  the 
last    half-century,    with    coarse    examples    of 
the    self-made  business    man — men  who  have 
struggled  against  adversity  in  early  life  to  a 
commanding  position.     Socially  many  of  these 
people  are  tolerated,   but  only  just  tolerated, 
on  account  of  their  wealth,  for  those  who  have 
come    into    contact    with   the    average    South 
African  diamond  dealer  or  Chicago  pork  butcher 
must  acknowledge  that  they  have  few  other 
attractions.     In  most  cases  their  early  struggles 
leave  indelible  marks  upon  their  mentality  and 
entirely  distort  their  outlook  on  life.    These 
factors,  of  course,  make  it  impossible  for  them 
to  be  artists  or  to  take  an  interest  in  art.     I  am 
not  thinking  of  a  man  like  Mr.  Pierpont  Morgan, 
who  was  born  into  a  fairly  wealthy  family,  who 
had  no  early  struggles  to  endure,  and  who  has 
consequently  not  only  preserved  but  developed 
his  artistic  sense.     I  am  thinking  rather  of  a 
14  209 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

man  like  Mr.  Carnegie  and  of  numerous  lesser 
individualities  like  him,  who  do  not  come 
quite  so  prominently  before  the  public.  The 
real  artist,  to  continue  the  analogy — if  such 
an  analogy  may  be  permitted — is  of  the 
Morgan  type.  The  real  artist,  that  is  to  say, 
will  have  no  early  artistic  struggles  to  endure, 
for,  as  the  result  of  artistic  tradition  on  both 
sides  of  his  family,  he  will  be  born  with  all  the 
requisite  artistic  instincts,  which  will  then  only 
require  purely  natural  development.  The  works 
of  such  an  artist,  whether  they  take  the  form 
of  music,  painting,  poetry,  sculpture,  or  archi- 
tectural designs,  will  be  marked  from  beginning 
to  end  by  an  entire  freedom  from  effort — there 
will  be  no  signs  of  a  deadly  struggle  as  between 
the  artist  and  something  that  appears  to  be 
hindering  his  progress,  no  sense  of  weariness, 
nothing  to  show  that  the  work  has  not  been 
produced  perfect  and  finished  as  by  magic  at  a 
moment's  notice. 

Far  different  will  be  the  case  of  those  men 
who  endeavour  to  act  as  artists  without  having 
been  born  with  this  artistic  tradition.  In  the 
best  of  cases  particular  attention  to  technique 
and  construction  may  deceive  even  the  skilled 
critic  at  the  first  reading  of  a  book  or  the  first 

210 


H.    G.    WELLS 


glance  at  a  picture.  In  the  worst  of  cases  we 
shall  be  painfully  conscious  of  the  halting 
efforts  of  the  person  who  is  endeavouring  to 
appeal  to  us — his  fingers  will  be  coarse,  as 
Nietzsche  would  say.  The  non-artistic  book 
will  result  from  the  exercise  of  the  reason  as 
opposed  to  the  imagination — science,  in  fact,  as 
opposed  to  art.  Mr.  Wells's  books  show  an 
ingenious  play  of  the  scientific  faculty,  but 
little  artistic  imagination. 

The  distinction  between  the  terms  can  easily 
be  made  clear.  When  an  author  creates  a 
character  or  a  series  of  characters,  he  is  un- 
doubtedly making  use  of  artistic  imagination 
in  some  form.  It  may  be  high  imagination,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  writers  of  the  Vedas  or  Homer 
or  Shakespeare,  or  it  may  be  a  lower  form  of 
imagination,  such  as  we  find  in  the  novels  of 
Jane  Austen.  But  when  a  writer  merely  makes 
a  careful  study  of  modern  science,  endeavours 
to  forecast  what  it  may  develop  into  in  the 
course  of  the  next  three  or  four  centuries,  and 
weaves  a  story  accordingly,  he  is  making  use 
of  a  purely  scientific  imagination.  Novelists 
of  this  latter  class  are  a  product  of  the  nine- 
teenth century — perhaps  Mr.  Shaw,  in  de- 
scribing them,  would  make  use  of  one  of  his 

211 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

favourite  expressions  and  say  that  they  were  a 
by-product.  Two  of  them  stand  out  promi- 
nently. One  of  them  is  the  amiable  French- 
man, Jules  Verne,  whose  books  have  delighted 
schoolboys  and  even  older  folks  for  a  genera- 
tion. Mr.  Wells's  imagination  does  not  differ 
in  kind  from  that  of  Jules  Verne.  It  differs 
somewhat  in  degree  ;  it  is  a  little  wider,  a 
little  higher,  a  little  more  omnivorous ;  but 
otherwise  most  of  his  books  are  on  precisely 
the  same  level  as  Twenty  Thousand  Leagues 
under  the  Sea,  It  is  quite  obvious,  for  example, 
that  in  books  like  The  Food  of  the  Gods,  The 
Invisible  Man,  The  Sleeper  Awakes,  The  First 
Men  in  the  Moon,  The  Wonderful  Visit,  The 
War  in  the  Air,  and  The  War  of  the  Worlds,  the 
characters  have  not  been  created  in  the  artistic 
sense  at  all.  They  are  merely  puppets,  marion- 
ettes, introduced  for  the  purpose  of  setting 
off  a  story  about  flying  machines,  escalators, 
and  a  peculiar  form  of  food.  The  artist  would 
have  thought  first  of  all  of  Mr.  Bensington  and 
Mr.  Redwood,  and  out  of  the  imagination  with 
which  he  would  have  endowed  them  the  food 
of  the  gods  would  have  come.  But  Mr.  Wells's 
scientific  researches  in  Kensington  made  him 
think  first  of  all  of  the  food  of  the  gods,  and 
212 


H.    G.    WELLS 


Mr.  Bensington,  Mr.  Redwood,  and  the  other 
characters  of  this  particular  book  were  all 
sketched  with  painful  exactitude  merely  for 
the  purpose  of  introducing  the  food  of  the 
gods  to  the  public.  But  one  or  two  clever 
touches  about  the  influence  exercised  on  English 
families  by  certain  vinegary  types  of  females 
will  remain  in  the  reader's  mind  even  when  he 
has  forgotten  all  about  the  giant  rats  and  the 
lame  conclusion  of  the  last  chapter  :  "  Cousin 
Jane,  indeed !  *'  says  Cossar.  '*  I  know  her. 
Rot  these  Cousin  Janes !  Country  infested 
with  'em  !  '* 

On  the  other  hand,  when  Mr.  Wells  forsakes 
his  science  he  still  refuses  to  give  us  a  purely 
imaginative    story ;     he    insists    instead    upon 
giving  us  sociological  novels,  and  the  sociology 
simply  takes  the  place  of  science.     There  is  no 
artistic  unity,  for  example,  about  Tono  Bungay  ; 
there   is   not  a  character  in  it  with  whom  we 
can  adequately  sympathise  or  in  whom  we  can 
take  any  interest.    The  really  artistic  novelist 
works  from  character  to   plot,  and  not  from 
plot  to  character.     But  all  the  characters  in 
Tono  Bungay  do  nothing  in  particular  ;  we  are 
simply  told  by  the  author  that  something  is 
actually  done  by  them.     For  example, ''  Uncle  '* 

213 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Ponderevo  is  at  first  a  chemist  in  an  obscure 
country  town,  and  in  a  few  years,  as  the  result 
of  the  sale  of  a  patent  medicine,  becomes  a 
great  financier.  But  Mr.  Wells  does  not  show 
us  how  this  is  possible  for  a  man  possessing 
only  abilities  such  as  those  with  which  he  has 
endowed  this  particular  character.  In  real 
life,  George's  uncle  would  have  ended  precisely 
as  we  find  him  in  the  opening  chapters  of  the 
book,  discontented  with  his  lot,  quarrelling 
with  his  neighbours,  and  probably  beating  his 
wife.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  admit  that  the 
man  possessed  abilities  which  Mr.  Wells  has 
not  shown  us,  his  career  would  not  have  reached 
the  sudden  termination  which  we  are  told  it  did. 

Tono  Bungay,  I  presume,  cannot  have  been 
written  merely  **  to  give  a  view  of  the  whole 
strange  advertising,  commercialised  civilisation 
of  which  London  is  the  centre,**  as  Mr.  Wells 
states  in  T.P.'s  Magazine  for  December  191 1  ; 
for  in  that  case  a  great  deal  of  the  introductory 
matter  and  the  details  of  George's  love  affairs 
would  be  unnecessary.  Neither  can  it  have 
been  written  to  show  us  how  George  Ponderevo 
invented  a  flying  machine.  It  was  not  written, 
I  think,  for  the  purpose  of  introducing  certain 
created  characters  to  the  world,  for  characters 

214 


H.    G.    WELLS 


put  into  a  novel  should  at  least  act  in  harmony, 
and  should  have  some  definite  reason  for  being 
there.  Perhaps  in  writing  Tono  Bungay  Mr. 
Wells  was  unconsciously  influenced  by  a  desire 
to  show  from  a  sociological  standpoint  the 
evil  effects  of  the  modern  financial  system, 
and  of  the  environment,  aristocratic  and  other- 
wise, surrounding  a  typical  English  village 
like  Bladesover.  Towards  the  end  of  Book  I 
we  find  Mr.  Wells  sticking  on  a  piece  of  mosaic 
in  order  that  he  may  attack  English  houses. 
He  objects,  and  rightly,  to  the  absence  of 
bathroom  in  so  many  cases,  the  insufficient 
accommodation,  and  the  ludicrous  manner 
in  which  landlords  endeavour  to  adapt  mid- 
Victorian  buildings  to  modern  requirements. 
This,  indeed,  is  one  of  the  subjects  Mr.  Wells 
has  very  much  at  heart,  for  he  refers  to  it  again 
in  Kipps.  Mrs.  Kipps  wants  *'  cubbuds  "  and 
has  tender  feelings  for  the  servant,  and  poor 
Kipps  in  the  end  is  forced  to  set  about  building 
a  house  for  himself.  But  in  Kipps,  as  in  Tono 
Bungay,  or  Love  and  Mr.  Lewisham,  we  view 
the  characters  with  a  very  mild,  lukewarm 
approval ;  we  cannot  sympathise  with  them. 
We  have  a  feeling  that  they  are  absolutely 
unimportant  people  ;    people  whom  it  is  not 

215 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

worth  writing  about.  What  on  earth,  for 
example,  does  Kipps  matter  to  us,  or  the  Wal- 
singhams,  or  Mr.  Coote  ?  Why  should  we  be 
expected  to  take  an  interest  in  the  sentimentality 
of  Mr.  Lewisham,  who  goes  back  to  his  first 
love,  Ethel,  or  in  the  even  more  disgusting 
sentimentality  of  Mr.  Kipps,  who  goes  back  to 
his  first  love,  Ann  ?  We  cannot  answer  these 
questions  without  considering  what  real  artists 
have  put  into  the  novel,  and  comparing  this 
with  what  Mr.  Wells  has  put  into  it.  No 
scullion  is  a  genius  ;  but  it  has  been  well  said 
of  Balzac  that  *'  even  his  scullions  have  genius." 
None  of  Mr.  Wells's  characters  have  genius, 
and  even  if  Mr.  Wells  himself  had  any  to  put 
into  them  it  is  evident  that  he  would  try  to 
avoid  doing  so.  For  Mr.  Wells  has  published 
an  article  giving  his  views  on  the  novel,*  and 
he  has  written  a  short  account  of  his  career  f 
which  is  very  illuminating  indeed  when  we 
seek  to  ascertain  the  origin  of  much  of  his 
work. 

In  The  Fortnightly  Review  article  Mr.  Wells 


*  The  Fortnightly  Review,  November  1911. 

t  This  was  written  by  Mr.  Wells  as  an  introduction  to  the 
Russian  translation  of  some  of  his  books.  It  was  published 
in  English  in  T.P.'s  Magazine  for  December  1911. 

216 


H.    G.    WELLS 


sets  forth  his  claims  for  what  he  regards  as  the 
ideal  novel : 

It  is  to  be  the  social  mediator,  the  vehicle  of  under- 
standing, the  instrument  of  self-examination,  the 
parade  of  morals  and  the  exchange  of  manners,  the 
factory  of  customs,  the  criticism  of  law  and  institu- 
tions and  of  social  dogmas  and  ideas.  It  is  to  be  the 
home  confessional,  the  initiator  of  knowledge,  the 
seed  of  fruitful  self-questioning.  Let  me  be  very  clear 
here.  I  do  not  mean  for  a  moment  that  the  novelist 
is  going  to  set  up  as  a  teacher,  as  a  sort  of  priest  with 
a  pen,  who  will  make  men  and  women  believe  and 
do  this  and  that.  The  novel  is  not  a  new  sort  of 
pulpit ;  humanity  is  passing  out  of  the  phase  when 
men  sit  under  preachers  and  dogmatic  influences. 
But  the  novelist  is  going  to  be  the  most  potent  of 
artists,  because  he  is  going  to  present  conduct,  deyise 
beautiful  conduct,  discuss  conduct,  analyse  conduct, 
suggest  conduct,  illuminate  it  through  and  through. 
He  will  not  teach,  but  discuss,  point  out,  plead  and 
display.  And  this  being  my  view  you  will  be  pre- 
pared for  the  demand  1  am  now  about  to  make  for 
an  absolutely  free  hand  for  the  novelist  in  his  choice 
of  topic  and  incident  and  in  his  method  of  treatment ; 
or  rather,  if  I  may  presume  to  speak  for  other  novelists, 
I  would  say  it  is  not  so  much  a  demand  we  make  as 
an  intention  we  proclaim.  We  are  going  to  write, 
subject  only  to  our  own  limitations,  about  the  whole 
of  human  life.  We  are  going  to  deal  with  political 
questions  and  social  questions.  We  cannot  present 
people  unless  we  have  this  free  hand,  this  unrestricted 
field.  What  is  the  good  of  telling  stories  about 
people's  lives  if  one  may  not  deal  freely  with  the  re- 
ligious beliefs  and  organisations  that  have  controlled 
or  failed  to  control  them  ?     What  is  the  good  of  pre- 

217 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

tending  to  write  about  love,  and  the  loyalties  and 
treacheries  and  quarrels  of  men  and  women,  if  one 
must  not  glance  at  those  varieties  of  physical  tempera- 
ment and  organic  quality,  those  deeply  passionate 
needs  and  distresses  from  which  half  the  storms  of 
human  life  are  brewed  ?  We  are  going  to  write  about 
it  all.  We  are  going  to  write  about  business  and 
finance  and  politics  and  precedence  and  pretentious- 

'  ness  and  decorum  and  indecorum,  until  a  thousand 
pretences  and  ten  thousand  impostures  shrivel  in  the 
cold,  clear  air  of  our  elucidations.  We  are  going  to 
write  of  wasted  opportunities  and  latent  beauties 
until  a  thousand  new  ways  of  living  open  to  men  and 
women.    We  are  going  to  appeal  to  the  young  and 

^  the  hopeful  and  the  curious,  against  the  established, 
the  dignified,  and  defensive.  Before  we  have  done, 
we  will  have  all  life  within  the  scope  of  the  novel. 

We  have  no  reason  to  doubt  that  Mr.  Wells 
sincerely  believes  in  the  views  he  advocates 
here,  for  he  certainly  endeavours  to  conform 
to  them  in  his  own  novels.  From  this  stand- 
point, therefore,  he  cannot  well  be  criticised  ; 
but  we  are  certainly  at  liberty  to  criticise  the 
opinions  he  advocates.  They  are,  in  my  opinion, 
contradictory  and  would  tend  to  degrade  the 
modern  novel  to  the  level  of  a  Fabian  Society 
pamphlet  on  a  large  scale — indeed  many  of 
the  sociological  criticisms  put  forward  in  Mr. 
Wells's  novels  {The  New  Machiavelli,  for  ex- 
ample, or  Tono  Bungay)  might  be  taken  straight 
from  Fabian  tracts.    Mr.  Wells  tells  us  that 

218 


H.    G.    WELLS 


the  novelist  is  not  going  to  set  up  as  a  teacher ; 
but  among  other  things  he  is  going  to  **  discuss 
conduct,  analyse  conduct,  suggest  conduct." 
It  really  amounts  to  the  same  thing  in  the  end. 
If  a  novelist  is  capable  of  doing  everything 
suggested  by  Mr.  Wells,  he  is  bound  to  be  the 
intellectual  superior  of  the  common  herd  of 
men  and  women,  and  in  such  a  case  he  is 
certain  to  hold  definite  opinions  which  he  will 
lose  no  opportunity  of  advocating.  He  will  not 
advocate  them  like  a  priest  of  the  Church  of 
Rome,  who  would  merely  have  to  give  a  word 
of  command  to  an  obedient  flock  ;  but  he  will 
advocate  them  in  the  much  less  noble  and  less 
aristocratic  fashion  of  a  dissenting  parson, 
who  is  always  prepared  for  an  indefinite  amount 
of  **  discussion."  The  very  emphasis,  indeed, 
which  Mr.  Wells  lays  upon  discussion  shows 
how  far  the  novelist  has  fallen  under  his  guidance 
from  a  high  literary  standard.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  find  any  kind  of  discussion  in  really 
first-class  novels — not  even  Sancho  Panza*s 
proverbs  come  under  this  head,  by  a  long  way. 
Nor  is  the  cause  of  this  at  all  recondite. 
The  novel  is  one  of  the  lowest  forms,  if  not  the 
lowest  form,  of  creative  art,  but  it  is  neverthe- 
less a  form  of  creative  art.     Art  ceases  to  be 

219 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

art  when  it  begins  to  discuss.  Like  the  Church 
of  Rome,  it  is  aristocratic  in  its  nature  ;  its 
message  is  flung  to  the  world  and  must  be 
taken  or  left.  Those  who  can  really  appreciate 
that  message  will  seize  upon  it,  make  it  their 
own,  and  attach  various  artistic  meanings  to 
it ;  but  they  will  certainly  not  ''  discuss  '*  it. 
Artistic  messages  are  only  *'  discussed ''  by 
those  who  cannot  clearly  understand  them. 
The  decline  of  art  in  Greece  gradually  led  to 
the  rise  of  men  like  Socrates,  Plato,  and  their 
numerous  followers,  to  whom  dialectics,  quibbles, 
and  hair-splitting  disputes  came  almost  natur- 
ally. We  must  assume,  then,  that  Mr.  Wells 
takes  a  remarkably  low  view  of  art  when  he 
suggests  that  the  coming  *'  artist ''  who  writes 
novels  is  going  to  '*  discuss  *'  problems,  espe- 
cially problems  of  conduct.  But  worse  than 
this  is  to  follow,  for  Mr.  Wells  tells  us  that  this 
novelist  of  his  will  not  teach  but  plead.  This 
is  indeed  the  very  antithesis  of  art.  Art  com- 
mands. It  gives  you  an  imperious  message, 
but  it  never  pleads. 

Those  artists  who  actually  do  know  definitely 
what  their  lifers  calling  means,  and  those  cul- 
tured people  who  instinctively  recognise  what 
the  artist  ought  and  ought  not  to  do,  will  natur- 

220 


H.    G.    WELLS 


ally  think  that  Mr.  Wells  holds  a  rather  low 
opinion  of  the  novel,  accentuating  it  by  telling  us 
that  the  coming  artist  will  not  merely  discuss 
and  plead — which  no  artist  would  think  of  doing 
— but  that  he  is  in  particular  to  discuss  and  plead 
in  behalf  of  conduct.  By  '*  conduct ''  Mr.  Wells 
refers  to  religious  beliefs  and  love — the  two 
most  important  factors  which  influence  the 
lives  of  men  and  women  and  decide  their  actions 
for  good  or  evil.  Mr.  Wells,  in  short,  wishes 
the  novelist  to  discuss  various  aspects  of 
morality  ;  for  religion  itself  and  the  relations 
of  the  sexes  are  the  two  main  features  summed 
up  in  this  word.  To  refute  Mr.  Wells  it  is  hardly 
necessary  to  quote  two  of  his  contemporaries 
against  him,  Oscar  Wilde  and  Arthur  Symons, 
who  both  held  very  definite  views  on  the  re- 
lationship which  art  bears  to  morality.  The 
moment  a  novelist  begins  to  discuss  conduct 
he  ceases  to  be  imaginative  and  he  ceases  to  be 
an  artist.  The  remark  applies  of  course  to  Mr. 
Wells  himself  as  much  as  to  the  ideal  novelist 
whose  appearance  he  so  eagerly  awaits.  I 
have  already  referred  to  some  of  Mr.  Wells*s 
books,  such  as  The  Food  of  the  Gods  and  The 
First  Men  in  the  Moon,  which  show  the  use  he 
makes   of   his   scientific   knowledge.     There   is 

221 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

just  as  little  trace  of  artistic  imagination  in 
his  more  ambitious  works,  such  as  The  New 
Machiavelli,  Tono  Bungay,  Anticipations,  or 
A  Modern  Utopia,  To  do  Mr.  Wells  justice,  he 
does  not  wish  either  Anticipations,  Mankind  in 
the  Making,  or  A  Modern  Utopia  to  be  treated 
as  novels,  but  rather  as  works  on  sociology. 
But  they  are  disfigured  from  the  artistic  point 
of  view  by  a  fault  which  is  common  also  to 
novels  like  The  War  in  the  Air,  and  that  is  the 
great  emphasis  laid  upon  the  development  of 
machinery.  The  artistic  mind  and  the  purely 
mechanical  or  engineering  mind  never  go  to- 
gether, and  no  artist  could  make  use  of  his 
imagination  to  devise  machinery  such  as  that 
employed  by  the  strange  race  with  which  Mr. 
Wells  has  peopled  the  moon.  Even  in  his 
short  stories  we  are  confronted  with  this  fault, 
the  introduction  of  the  scientist  instead  of  the 
artist.  In  The  Country  of  the  Blind — a  collec- 
tion of  thirty-three  short  stories — we  find  some 
typical  examples,  such  as  The  Cone,  The  Flower- 
ing of  the  Strange  Orchid,  The  Remarkable  Case 
of  Davidson*  s  Eyes,  Under  the  Knife,  The 
Plattner  Story,  and  several  others.  , 

As  I  have  already  intimated,  when  Mr.  Wells 
leaves  the  purely  scientific  side  of  novel-writing, 

222 


H.    G.    WELLS 


he  does  not  turn  to  creative  work  so  much  as 
to  sociology,  and  if  we  may  judge  from  what 
he  has  written  he  is  at  one  with  a  vast  number 
of  men  and  women  of  the  present  day  in  re- 
garding sexual  problems  as  one  of  the  most 
important  features  of  our  social  life.  Why  sex 
has  come  to  be  so  regarded  may,  I  think,  be 
explained  in  a  very  short  space.  The  demo- 
cratic requirements  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
particularly  in  Teutonic  countries,  and  above 
all  in  England,  laid  ever  greater  stress  on  the 
importance  of  woman  in  the  community,  and 
enthusiastically  advocated  the  raising  of  her 
status.  The  obvious  facts  of  everyday  life 
were  in  themselves  a  sufficient  refutation  of 
the  sentimental  arguments  which  would  have 
led  us  to  raise  woman  to  the  level  of  man  ; 
but  unfortunately  men  like  Bentham  and  Mill, 
to  mention  only  two  prominent  Liberal  re- 
formers of  the  last  century,  were  not  men 
whom  obvious  facts  could  convince.  Their 
philosophical  tendencies  led  them  unconsciously 
to  idealise  everything  that  did  not  appeal  to 
them,  to  cast  a  romantic  halo  round  the  awk- 
ward facts  which  contradicted  the  principles 
they  advocated.  These  remarks  apply,  of 
course,   not   merely   to  the   philosophers  just 

223 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

referred    to,    but   to    all   their  followers    and 
many  of   their  contemporaries.     Men  who  are 
in   other  respects  far  apart,  such  as  Professor 
Hobhouse,    Mr.    George    Bernard    Shaw,    and 
Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  have  all  a  common  bond  in 
their  desire  to  *'  raise  ''  women  to  the  higher 
level.    A   great   deal   has   already   been   done 
towards    making    woman    economically    inde- 
pendent— the  Married  Women's  Property  Act, 
for  example  ;    but  it  is  not  economically,  ap- 
parently, but  rather  sexually  that  thinkers  like 
Mr.   Wells  and   Mr.   Shaw   would  like   to   see 
woman  made  independent.    Mr.  Wells — judging, 
of  course,    merely   from    his   published  works 
—simply  advocates   absolute   equality   in    the 
relations  between  the  sexes.     His  views  on  the 
point  are   advocated  with  particular  clearness 
and  emphasis  in  Ann  Veronica  and  The  New 
Machiavelli. 

All  that  need  be  said  about  the  present 
sexual  agitation  in  England  is  that  infinitely 
too  much  importance  is  attached  to  it.  Thanks 
to  the  efforts  of  a  previous  generation,  women 
of  the  present  day  find  themselves  raised  to 
a  certain  intellectual  level  for  which  their 
training  has  not  fitted  them,  and  where,  to  tell 
the  truth,  most  of  them  feel  rather  uncom- 

224 


H.    G.    WELLS 


fort  able.  If  the  pompous  phraseology  of  sexual 
reformers  is  to  be  believed,  woman  is  now  to 
take  her  place  by  the  side  of  man  as  his  in- 
tellectual companion — a  place  which  the  average 
woman  is  certainly  not  fitted  to  take.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  greater  freedom  of  expression 
permitted  to  the  modern  woman  has  led  her 
to  debate  the  subject  of  sex  much  more  openly 
than  formerly,  and  this  very  debating  of  course 
has  led  to  much  greater  importance  being 
attached  to  the  question  than  need  have 
been  the  case.  Where  the  average  man  is  con- 
cerned, sex  is  purely  an  incidental  matter — 
not  exactly  a  joke,  but  still  something  which 
need  not  be  bothered  about  too  seriously.  Sex, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  the  one  and  only  asset  of 
the  average  woman  ;  hence  she  takes  it  very 
seriously  indeed,  as  do  all  the  effeminate  males 
who  ''  sympathise  ''  with  the  *'  movement." 
Remington,  the  hero  of  The  New  Machiavelli, 
is  obsessed  by  sex.  This  is  obvious  all  through 
the  book,  but  it  is  particularly  obvious  in 
Chapter  IV,  where  he  sets  down  his  views 
with  exactitude  : 


I  have  already  compared  the  lot  of  the  modern 
publicist  to  Machiavelli  writing  in  his  study  :  in  his 
day  women  and  sex  were  as  disregarded  in  these  high 

15  225 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

affairs  as,  let  us  say,  the  chemistry  of  air  or  the  will 
of  the  beasts  in  the  fields  ;  in  ours  the  case  has  alto- 
gether changed,  and  woman  has  come  now  to  stand 
beside  the  tall  candles,  half  in  the  light,  half  in  the 
mystery  of  the  shadows,  besetting,  interrupting,  de- 
manding unrelentingly  an  altogether  unprecedented 
attention.  I  feel  that  in  these  matters  my  life  has 
been  almost  typical  of  my  time.  Woman  insists  upon 
her  presence.  She  is  no  longer  a  mere  physical  need, 
an  aesthetic  by-play,  a  sentimental  background  ;  she 
is  a  moral  and  intellectual  necessity  in  a  man's  life. 
She  comes  to  the  politician  and  demands.  Is  she  a 
child  or  a  citizen  ?  Is  she  a  thing  or  a  soul  ?  She 
comes  to  the  individual  man,  as  she  came  to  me,  and 
asks.  Is  she  a  cherished  weakling  or  an  equal  mate, 
an  unavoidable  helper  ?  Is  she  to  be  tried  and 
trusted  or  guarded  and  controlled,  bound  or  free  ? 
For  if  she  is  a  mate,  one  must  at  once  trust  more  and 
exact  more,  exacting  toil,  courage,  and  the  hardest, 
most  necessary  thing  of  all,  the  clearest,  most  shame- 
less, explicitness  of  understanding. 

When  it  is  recollected  that  in  the  very  first 
chapter  of  the  book  Remington  compares  him- 
self to  Machiavelli,  we  can  only  say  that  this 
is  far  from  being  the  view  of  the  matter  that 
the  great  Florentine  himself  would  have  taken. 
The  real  Machiavelli  had  a  wife  and  child,  and 
many  other  love  affairs  in  addition  ;  but  he 
never  let  his  wife,  his  baby,  or  his  mistresses 
interfere  in  the  slightest  degree  with  his  dip- 
lomacy or  his  writings.  Remington,  the  new 
Machiavelli,  on  the  other  hand,  after  ceasing 

226 


H.   G.   WELLS 


to  love  his  wife  Margaret,  finds  it  necessary 
to  choose  between  his  career  as  a  statesman 
and  his  mistress  Isabel.  Isabel,  it  seems, 
hungers  for  children  and  wants  to  have  Reming- 
ton all  to  herself.  These  things  are  made 
known  to  us  at  an  interview  between  Remington 
and  Isabel  after  the  hero  has  just  been  returned 
for  Handitch.  With  the  exception  of  a  few 
passages  in  Ann  Veronica,  I  can  recall  no 
more  disgustingly  sentimental  and  inartistic 
scene  in  English  or  any  other  literature  : 

"  You've  done  a  great  thing  this  time,"  she  said. 
*'  Handitch  will  make  you." 

'*  It  opens  big  chances,"  I  said.    "  But  why  are 
you  weeping,  dear  one  ?  " 

"  Envy,"  she  said,  "  and  love." 

"  You're  not  lonely  ?  " 

*'  I've  plenty  to  do — and  lots  of  people." 

"  Well  ?  " 

"  I  want  you.** 

'*  You've  got  me.'* 

She  put  her  arm  about  me  and  kissed  me.  "I 
want  you,"  she  said,  "  just  as  if  I  had  nothing  of 
you.  You  don't  understand — how  a  woman  wants  a 
man.  I  thought  once  if  I  just  gave  myself  to  you  it 
would  be  enough.  It  was  nothing — it  was  just  a  step 
across  the  threshold.  My  dear,  every  moment  you 
are  away  I  ache  for  you — ache !  I  want  to  be  about 
when  it  isn't  love-making  or  talk.  I  want  to  be 
doing  things  for  you,  and  watching  you  when  you're 
not  thinking  of  me.  All  those  safe,  careless,  inti- 
mate things.     And  something  else "     She  stopped. 

227 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

"  Dear,  I  don't  want  to  bother  you.  I  just  want  you 
to  know  I  love  you " 

She  caught  my  head  in  her  hands  and  kissed  it, 
then  stood  up  abruptly. 

I  looked  up  at  her,  a  little  perplexed. 

"  Dear  heart,"  said  I,  *'  isn't  this  enough  ?  You're 
my  councillor,  my  colleague,  my  right  hand,  the  secret 
soul  of  my  life " 

"  And  I  want  to  darn  your  socks,**  she  said,  smiling 
back  at  me. 

"  You're  insatiable." 

She  smiled.  *'  No,"  she  said,  "  I'm  not  insatiable, 
master.  But  I'm  a  woman  in  love.  And  I'm  finding 
out  what  I  want,  and  what  is  necessary  to  me — and 
what  I  can't  have.     That's  all." 

"  We  get  a  lot." 

"  We  want  a  lot.  You  and  I  are  greedy  people  for 
the  things  we  Hke.  It's  very  evident  we've  got  nearly 
all  we  can  ever  have  of  one  another — and  I'm  not 
satisfied." 

'*  What  more  is  there  ?  " 

"  For  you — very  little.  I  wonder.  For  me — every- 
thing.    Yes — everything. ' ' 

"  You  didn't  mean  it ;  you  didn't  know  any  more 
than  I  did  when  I  began,  but  love  between  a  man  and 
a  woman  is  sometimes  very  one-sided.  Fearfully  one- 
sided !    That's  all " 

"  Don't  YOU  ever  want  children  ?  *'  she  said 
abruptly. 

**  I  suppose  I  do." 

"  You  don't !  '* 

"  I  haven't  thought  of  them.'* 

"  A  man  doesn't,  perhaps.  But  I  have.  ...  I 
want  them — like  hunger.  Your  children,  and  home 
with  you.  Really,  continually  you !  That's  the 
trouble.  ...  I  can't  have  'em,  and  I  can't  have  you." 

She  was  crying,  and  through  her  tears  she  laughed. 

228 


H.   G.   WELLS 


"I'm  going  to  make  a  scene/'  she  said,  "  and  get 
this  over.  I'm  so  discontented  and  miserable  ;  I've 
got  to  tell  you.  It  would  come  between  us  if  I  didn't. 
I'm  in  love  with  you,  with  everything — with  all  my 
brains.  I'll  pull  through  all  right.  I'll  be  good,  never 
you  fear.  But  to-day  I'm  crying  out  with  all  my 
being.  This  election — you're  going  up  ;  you're  going 
on.  In  these  papers — you're  a  great  big  fact.  It's 
suddenly  come  home  to  me.  At  the  back  of  my  mind 
I've  always  had  the  idea  I  was  going  to  have  you 
somehow  presently  for  myself — I  mean  to  have  you 
to  go  long  tramps  with,  to  keep  house  for,  to  get 
meals  for,  to  watch  for  of  an  evening.  It's  a  sort  of 
habitual  background  to  my  thought  of  you.  And  it's 
nonsense — utter  nonsense  !  "  She  stopped.  She  was 
crying  and  choking.  "  And  the  child,  you  know — the 
child  !  " 

We  know,  of  course,  what  is  going  to  follow. 
The  lovers  make  a  few  ineffective  attempts  to 
part ;  but  they  cannot,  and  in  spite  of  the 
entreaties  of  his  political  friends,  especially 
Britten,  Remington  renounces  his  promising 
career  and  goes  off  with  Isabel.  Not  so  Machia- 
velli,  when  he  thought  his  country  wanted  him  : 
**  I  would  they  employed  me,'*  he  cries.  **  I 
would  they  employed  me  were  it  only  to  roll 
stones,  for  if  I  could  not  then  win  them  over, 
it  would  be  my  fault  and  not  fortune's.'' 

Those  who  wish  for  a  very  complete  com- 
parison of  the  two  Machiavellis  will  find  it  in 
an  interesting  essay  by  Mr.  A.  E.  Randall  in 

229 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Volume  VIII  of  The  New  Age ;  but  before 
leaving  Remington  altogether  I  should  like  to 
refer  again  to  his  views  on  women  as  set  forth 
above.  It  is  simply  untrue  to  suggest  that 
there  is  such  an  enormous  difference  between 
the  woman  of  the  twentieth  century  and  the 
woman  of  the  sixteenth.  She  may  not,  to 
use  Remington's  own  phrase,  *'  insist  upon  her 
presence  '*  as  much  as  she  likes  ;  but  whether 
she  has  her  way  or  not  will  depend  upon  the 
man  on  whom  she  forces  her  insistence.  Napo- 
leon was  greatly  influenced  by  women  ;  but 
they  did  not  interfere  with  his  campaigns  or 
his  plans,  so  successfully  carried  out,  for  the 
complete  reorganisation  of  the  French  Ad- 
ministration. If  Napoleon  is  not  sufficiently 
modern  to  satisfy  Mr.  Wells,  let  him  inquire 
how  many  women  tried  to  insist  upon  their 
presence  where  Bismarck  was  concerned,  and 
how  he  dealt  with  them.  The  truth  is,  woman 
has  always  tried  to  insist  upon  her  presence  in 
every  age  and  in  every  country.  Whether  she 
was  successful  or  not  depended  entirely  upon 
the  virile  qualities  of  the  man  she  had  to  deal 
with.  There  are  large  numbers  of  men  to-day 
who  can  be  influenced  as  Remington  was 
influenced — their  number  perhaps  is  larger  than 
230 


H.   G.   WELLS 


at  any  former  period,  with  the  exception  of 
those  early  decades  of  the  Christian  era  when 
the  Roman  Empire  was  practically  governed 
by  the  women  connected  with  the  court  and 
not  by  the  men.  But  even  at  the  present  day 
there  are  men,  though  their  number  may  be 
relatively  small,  who  would,  like  the  real 
Machiavelli,  willingly  see  the  whole  female  sex 
at  the  bottom  of  the  sea  if  they  thought  for  a 
moment  it  would  tend  to  interfere  with  their 
ambitious  designs.  Whether,  to  come  back  to 
Remington,  a  woman  is  a  moral  and  intellectual 
necessity  in  a  man's  life  depends  merely  on 
the  woman  and  the  man.  As  a  general  state- 
ment Remington's  opinion  is  not  worth  serious 
consideration. 

We  have  not  done,  however,  with  this  scene 
between  Remington  and  Isabel,  or  rather  this 
conversation  between  them.  To  say  that  it  is 
almost  like  what  would  happen  in  real  life  would 
possibly  be  considered  by  a  few  of  the  old- 
fashioned  critics  as  a  compliment  to  the  book ; 
but  from  the  artistic  point  of  view  it  is  rather 
a  defect.  Before  proceeding  to  discuss  this 
point,  let  us  take  one  or  two  conversations 
between  certain  of  Mr.  Wells's  characters  who 
are  somewhat  lower  in  the  social  scale.     In 

231 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Chapter  VI  of  Love  and  Mr.  Lewisham,  Mr. 
Lewisham  takes  ''  Love,"  that  is  Ethel,  out  for 
a  walk  : 

*'  Let  us  go  on  now,"  she  said  abruptly.  **  The  rain 
has  stopped." 

**  That  little  path  goes  straight  to  Immering,"  said 
Mr.  Lewisham. 

"  But,  four  o'clock  ?  " 

He  drew  out  his  watch,  and  his  eyebrows  went  up. 
It  was  already  nearly  a  quarter  past  four. 

"Is  it  past  four  ?  "  she  asked,  and  abruptly  they 
were  face  to  face  with  parting.  That  Lewisham  had 
to  take  "  duty "  at  half-past  five  seemed  a  thing 
utterly  trivial.  "  Surely,"  he  said,  only  slowly 
realising  what  this  parting  meant.  "  But  must  you  ? 
I — I  want  to  talk  to  you." 

"  Haven't  you  been  talking  to  me  ?  " 

"  It  isn't  that.     Besides— no." 

She  stood  looking  at  him.  "  I  promised  to  be  home 
by  four,"  she  said.     "  Mrs.  Frobisher  has  tea " 

"  We  may  never  have  a  chance  to  see  one  another 
again." 

"  Well  ?  " 

Lewisham  suddenly  turned  very  white. 

**  Don't  leave  me,"  he  said,  breaking  a  tense  silence, 
and  with  a  sudden  stress  in  his  voice.  "  Don't  leave 
me.  St  op  with  me  yet  for  a  little  while.  .  .  .  You  .  .  . 
you  can  lose  your  way." 

*'  You  seem  to  think,"  she  said,  forcing  a  laugh, 
'*  that  I  hve  without  eating  and  drinking." 

*'  I  have  wanted  to  talk  to  you  so  much.  The  first 
time  I  saw  you.  ...  At  first  I  dared  not.  ...  I  did 
not  know  you  would  let  me  talk.  .  .  .  And  now,  just 
as  I  am  happy,  you  are  going." 

He  stopped  abruptly.    Her  eyes  were  downcast. 

232 


H.   G.   WELLS 


**  No,"  she  said,  tracing  a  curve  with  the  point  of  her 
shoe.  '*  No.  I  am  not  going."  Lewisham  restrained 
an  impulse  to  shout.  **  You  will  come  to  Immering  ?  " 
he  cried,  and  as  they  went  along  the  narrow  path 
through  the  wet  grass,  he  began  to  tell  her  with  simple 
frankness  how  he  cared  for  her  company.  **  I  would 
not  change  this,"  he  said,  casting  about  for  an  offer 
to  reject,  "  for — anything  in  the  world.  ...  I  shall 
not  be  back  for  duty.  I  don't  care.  I  don't  care 
what  happens  so  long  as  we  have  this  afternoon." 

**  Nor  I,"  she  said. 

**  Thank  you  for  coming,"  he  said  in  an  outburst  of 
gratitude.  "Oh,  thank  you  for  coming,"  and  held 
out  his  hand.  She  took  it  and  pressed  it,  and  so  they 
went  on  hand  in  hand  until  the  village  street  was 
reached.  Their  high  resolve  to  play  truant  at  all 
costs  had  begotten  a  wonderful  sense  of  fellowship. 
**  I  can't  call  you  Miss  Henderson,"  he  said.  '*  You 
know  I  can't.  You  know  ...  I  must  have  your 
Christian  name." 

*'  Ethel,"  she  told  him. 

*'  Ethel,"  he  said,  and  looked  at  her,  gathering 
courage  as  he  did  so. 

'*  Ethel,"  he  repeated.  '*  It  is  a  pretty  name.  But 
no  name  is  quite  pretty  enough  for  you,  Ethel  .  .  . 
dear." 

Turning  to  Book  III  of  Kipps,  we  find  that 
the  hero's  uncle  has  not  yet  accustomed  himself 
to  the  change  in  his  nephew's  fortunes  : 

But  there  remained  something  in  his  manner  to- 
wards Ann — in  the  glances  of  scrutiny  he  gave  her 
unawares,  that  kept  Kipps  alertly  expansive  when- 
ever he  was  about ;  and  in  all  sorts  of  ways.  It  was 
on  account  of  old  Kipps,  for  example,  that  our  Kipps 

233 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

plunged  one  day — a  golden  plunge — and  brought  home 
a  box  of  cummerbundy  ninepenny  cigars,  and  sub- 
stituted blue  label  old  Methuselah  Four  Stars  for  the 
common  and  generally  satisfactory  white  brand. 

"  Some  of  this  is  whisky,  my  boy,"  said  old  Kipps, 
when  he  tasted  it,  smacking  critical  lips.  .  .  . 

**  Saw  a  lot  of  young  oihcery  fellers  coming  along," 
said  old  Kipps.  **  You  ought  to  join  the  volunteers, 
my  boy,  and  get  to  know  a  few." 

"  I  dessay  I  shall,"  said  Kipps.     "  Later." 

**  They'd  make  you  an  officer,  you  know,  'n  no 
time.  They  want  officers,"  said  old  Kipps.  '*  It 
isn't  every  one  can  afford  it.  They'd  be  regular  glad 
to  'ave  you.  .  .  .  Ain't  bort  a  dog  yet  ?  " 

"  Not  yet,  uncle.     'Ave  a  segar  ?  " 

**  Nor  a  moty  car  ?  " 

'*  Not  yet,  uncle." 

**  There's  no  'urry  about  that.  And  don't  get  one 
of  these  'ere  trashy  cheap  ones  when  you  do  get  it, 
my  boy.  Get  one  as'll  last  a  lifetime.  ...  I'm  sur- 
prised you  don't  'ire  a  bit  more." 

**  Ann  don't  seem  to  fency  a  moty  car,"  said  Kipps. 

"Ah,"  said  old  Kipps,  "  I  expect  not,"  and  glanced 
a  comment  at  the  door.  **  She  ain't  used  to  going 
out,"  he  said.     **  More  at  'ome  indoors." 

"  Fact  is,"  said  Kipps  hastily,  '*  we're  thinking  of 
building  a  'ouse." 

"  I  wouldn't  do  that,  my  boy,"  began  old  Kipps ; 
but  his  nephew  was  routing  in  the  chiffonier  drawer 
amidst  the  plans.  He  got  them  in  time  to  check  some 
further  comment  on  Ann.  "  Um,"  said  the  old 
gentleman,  a  little  impressed  by  the  extraordinary 
odour  and  the  unusual  transparency  of  the  tracing- 
paper  Kipps  put  into  his  hands. 

**  Thinking  of  building  a  'ouse,  are  you  ?  " 

Kipps  began  with  the  most  modest  of  the  three 
projects. 

234 


H.   G.   WELLS 


Old  Kipps  read  slowly  through  his  silver-rimmed 
spectacles,  "  Plan  of  a  'ouse  for  Arthur  Kipps, 
Esquire.     Um." 

He  didn't  warm  to  the  project  all  at  once,  and  Ann 
drifted  into  the  room  to  find  him  still  scrutinizing  the 
architect's  proposals  a  little  doubtfully. 

"  We  couldn't  find  a  decent  'ouse  anywhere,"  said 
Kipps,  leaning  against  the  table  and  assuming  an  off- 
hand note.  "  I  didn't  see  why  we  shouldn't  run  up 
one  for  ourselves."  Old  Kipps  could  not  help  liking 
the  tone  of  that. 

"  We  thought  we  might  see "  said  Ann. 

"  It's  a  spekerlation,  of  course,"  said  old  Kipps, 
and  held  the  plan  at  a  distance  of  two  feet  or  more 
from  his  glasses  and  frowned.  "  This  isn't  exactly 
the  'ouse  I  should  expect  you  to  have  thought  of, 
though,"  he  said.  "  Practically  it's  a  villa.  It's  the 
sort  of  'ouse  a  bank  clerk  might  'ave.  'Tisn't  what  I 
should  call  a  gentleman's  'ouse,  Artie." 

**  It's  plain,  of  course,"  said  Kipps,  standing  beside 
his  uncle  and  looking  down  at  this  plan,  which  cer- 
tainly did  seem  a  little  less  magnificent  now  than  it 
had  at  the  first  encounter. 

**  You  mustn't  'ave  it  too  plain,"  said  old  Kipps. 

**  If  it's  comfortable "  Ann  hazarded. 

Old  Kipps  glanced  at  her  over  his  spectacles. 
**  You  ain't  comfortable,  my  gel,  in  this  world,  not  if 
you  don't  hve  up  to  your  position,"  so  putting  com- 
pactly into  contemporary  English  that  fine  old  phrase 
Noblesse  oblige.  '*  A  'ouse  of  this  sort  is  what  a  retired 
tradesman  might  'ave,  or  some  little  whipper-snapper 
of  a  s'licitor.     But  you " 

"  Course  that  isn't  the  on'y  plan,"  said  Kipps,  and 
tried  the  middle  one. 

But  it  was  the  third  one  won  over  old  Kipps. 
"  Now  that's  a  'ouse,  my  boy,"  he  said,  at  the  sight 
of  it. 

235 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

These  conversations  are  well  done,  and  they 
may  interest  and  amuse  us  to  some  extent ; 
but  they  are  not  what  we  can  conscientiously 
call  artistic,  and  they  do  not  entitle  Mr.  Wells 
to  the  leading  place  he  occupies  among  our 
present-day  novelists.  No  doubt,  however, 
they  conform  to  Mr.  Wells's  ambition  to  have 
all  life  in  a  novel.  It  is  just  this  ambition  of 
Mr.  Wells  which,  it  seems  to  me,  is  so  directly 
opposed  to  art.  The  artist  cannot  take  life 
as  it  stands,  and  throw  it  into  a  novel  or  on 
canvas.  It  is  the  task  of  the  artist  not  merely 
to  create,  but  to  select  and  interpret — to 
re-create  nature  for  us  by  reinterpreting  her ; 
to  make  life  valuable  and  pleasing  to  us  by 
bringing  harmony  into  its  discords  and  restoring 
order  to  its  chaos.  This  is  the  work  of  the 
artist  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word,  for  the 
artist  who  can  thus  interpret  what  is  obscure 
must  comprise  within  himself  the  highest  types 
of  poet,  philosopher,  and  priest.  Low  though 
the  novel  may  stand  in  the  scale  of  art-forms, 
it  is  nevertheless  entitled  to  rank  as  one  when 
properly  written.  But,  like  all  art-forms,  it 
can  in  no  circumstance  be  used  as  an  instrument 
of  political,  sociological,  economic  or  other 
propaganda.    Wherever    such    propaganda    is 

236 


H.   G.   WELLS 


attempted,  the  result  is  a  loss  to  the  art  of  the 
novel  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  the  attempted 
propaganda  of  any  sociological  question  on  the 
stage  results  in  the  degradation  of  the  art  of 
the  drama. 

It  follows,  then,  that  the  real  artist  must  not 
set  out  in  print  conversations  exactly  as  they 
might  have  taken  place  in  ordinary  life.  He 
must  select  from  them,  or  rather  condense 
them  considerably.  Guy  de  Maupassant,  for 
example,  would  never  let  conversations  between 
his  characters  extend  over  two  or  three  pages 
of  print,  as  Mr.  Wells  often  does.  His  artistic 
faculty  of  selection  would  have  led  him  to  take 
one  or  two  typical  sentences,  or  rather  out  of 
a  number  of  sentences  he  would  have  formed 
one  apparently  typical,  and  yet  really  so  con- 
densed and  explicit  as  to  let  us  penetrate  into 
the  inner  minds  of  his  characters  more  easily 
than  if  we  had  read  perhaps  a  couple  of  pages 
of  their  actual  conversation. 

As  to  the  use  of  the  novel  as  a  means  of 
propagating  new  ideas,  I  only  wish  I  could 
apply  to  Mr.  Wells  the  praise  which  Luis 
Alfonso  has  so  deservedly  bestowed  upon  Pedro 
Antonio  de  Alarcon  :  '*  What  problem  is  he 
concerned  with  ?    That  of  writing  novels  with- 

237 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

out  intricate  or  terrifying  plots :  without 
supreme  efforts,  without  tiresome  expedients, 
and  to  see  whether  he  cannot  finally  succeed 
— as  he  actually  does  succeed — in  peacefully 
recreating  the  mind  of  his  reader  without 
exciting  or  irritating  him.  .  .  .  He  has  shown 
himself  to  be  a  superb  and  talented  painter — 
he  neither  is  nor  wishes  to  appear  to  be  a 
philosopher,  a  historian,  or  a  moralist,  but 
simply  a  narrator.** 

I   do   not   say   that   in   this   simple   though 
excellent  piece  of  criticism  Luis  Alfonso  has 
adequately  and  entirely  summed  up  the  good 
points   of   a   novelist ;     but   he   has   certainly 
covered  many  of  them.     It  is  emphatically  the 
purpose   of   novelists   of   the   Wells   school   to 
excite  and  disturb  the   reader's  mind.     They 
wish    to   force   upon    our   attention    problems 
relating   to   sociology,    politics,   or  philosophy, 
whether  we  care  to  listen  to  them  or  not.     It 
never  seems  to  occur  to  them  that  problems  of 
this  nature  cannot  be  dealt  with  by  the  creative 
artist,  but  by  minds  of  quite  a  different  order, 
and    most    emphatically    not    in    novels.     Of 
course  men  of  genius,  like  Nietzsche,  Aristotle, 
or  Lao  Tsu,  are  at  liberty  to  turn  their  attention 
to  political  or  sociological  problems,   if  they 
238 


H.    G.   WELLS 


feel  so  inclined  ;  but  in  such  a  case  they  content 
themselves  with  stating  luminous  general  prin- 
ciples without  attempting  to  burrow  among  the 
pettifogging  details  so  dear  to  the  hearts  of 
many  English  novelists  whom  it  would  be  easy 
to  name.     In  The  Sleeper  Awakes,  for  example, 
Mr.  Wells  is  not  content  to  deal  with  new  forms 
of  locomotion  and  State  organisation  ;  but  he 
provides  us  in  addition  with  a  revised  system 
of  numerals,  so  that  we  meet  with  phrases  like 
"  two  dozand  of  men."     If,  however,  instead  of 
devising  new  systems  of  numerals  and  prophe- 
sying about  new  forms  of  locomotion,  Mr.  Wells 
had  set  himself  to  the  task  of  devising  a  new 
character  or  characters,  most  of  us  who  look 
for  a  certain  amount  of  art  in  novels  would 
be  much  better   satisfied.      In  spite  of  what 
some  of  his  admirers  say  about  his  interest  in 
humanity,  it  has  always  appeared  to  me  that 
interest  in  humanity,  as  such,  is  precisely  what 
Mr.  Wells  lacks.     He  is  interested  in  men  in  so 
far  as  they  may  serve  to  set  off  some  story 
about  a  new  invention,  or  to  illustrate  a  socio- 
logical  or   political   principle.      But    in   man, 
purely  and  simply  as  man,  Mr.  Wells  seems  to 
manifest  no  particular  interest  at  all.     In  The 
Sleeper  Awakes,  to  take  an  instance,  his  descrip- 

239 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

tions  of  the  new  mechanical  inventions  which  we 
.  may  expect  to  see  in  a  couple  of  centuries  are 
excellently  done ;  but  such  inventions,  although 
they  would  not  have  changed  the  primitive 
nature  of  man,  would  at  all  events  have  altered 
the  opinions  held  by  the  Londoners  of  that  day 
very  considerably.  But  Ostrog,  Lincoln,  and 
the  members  of  the  Council  think  and  argue 
precisely  as  members  of  the  Fabian  Society  do 
at  the  present  day.  And  the  women,  like  all 
Mr.  Wells's  women,  are  appallingly  sexual  and 
hunger  for  babies. 

Apparently,  then,  Mr.  Wells  does  not  wish 
to  favour  us  by  devoting  particular  attention 
to  the  human  element  in  his  characters.  His 
two  most  ambitious  attempts  in  this  direction — 
Remington  in  The  New  Machiavelli,  and  *' Uncle" 
Ponderevo  in  Tono  Bungay — turn  out  in  the 
end  to  be  the  ordinary,  sloppy  sentimentalists 
whom  we  can  find  in  almost  any  modern  novel 
we  pick  up. 

If  we  examine  into  the  sentimental  side  of 
Mr.  Wells — he  himself  has  given  us  a  few 
particulars  which  will  enable  us  to  do  so — we 
may  perhaps  be  able  to  find  out  why  we  cannot 
call  him  precisely  an  artist.  In  the  article  in 
T.P.'s    Magazine    to    which    I    have    already 

340 


H.   G.   WELLS 


referred,  he  mentions  his  family  with  all  the 
irritating  smugness  of  a  self-made  English 
manufacturer.     He  says  : 

I  am  just  now  forty-two  years  old,  and  I  was  born 
in  that  queer  indefinite  class  that  we  call  in  England 
the  middle  class.  I  am  not  a  bit  aristocratic ;  I  do 
not  know  any  of  my  ancestors  beyond  my  grand- 
parents, and  about  them  I  do  not  know  very  much, 
because  I  am  the  youngest  son  of  my  father  and 
mother,  and  their  parents  were  all  dead  before  I  was 
born.  My  mother  was  the  daughter  of  an  innkeeper 
at  a  place  named  Midhurst,  who  supplied  post-horses 
to  the  coaches  before  the  railways  came  ;  my  father 
was  the  son  of  the  head-gardener  of  Lord  de  Lisle  at 
Penshurst  Castle,  in  Kent.  They  had  various  changes 
of  fortune  and  position  ;  for  most  of  his  life  my  father 
kept  a  little  shop  in  a  suburb  of  London,  and  eked  out 
his  resources  by  playing  a  game  called  cricket,  which 
is  not  only  a  pastime,  but  a  show  which  people  will 
pay  to  see,  and  which,  therefore,  affords  a  living  for 
professional  players.  His  shop  was  unsuccessful,  and 
my  mother,  who  had  once  been  a  lady's  maid,  became, 
when  I  was  twelve  years  old,  housekeeper  in  a  large 
country  house.  I  too  was  destined  to  be  a  shop- 
keeper. I  left  school  at  thirteen  for  that  purpose. 
I  was  apprenticed  first  to  a  chemist,  and,  that  proving 
unsatisfactory,  to  a  draper.  But  after  a  year  or  so 
it  became  evident  to  me  that  the  facilities  for  higher 
education  that  were  and  still  are  constantly  increasing 
in  England,  offered  me  better  chances  in  life  than  a 
shop  and  comparative  illiteracy  could  do  ;  and  so  I 
struggled  for  and  got  various  grants  and  scholarships 
that  enabled  me  to  study  and  to  take  a  degree  in 
science  and  some  mediocre  honours  in  the  new  and 
now  great  and  growing  University  of  London 

i6  241 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

After  I  had  graduated  I  taught  biology  for  two  or 
three  years,  and  then  became  a  journahst,  partly  be- 
cause it  is  a  more  remunerative  profession  in  England 
than  teaching,  but  partly  also  because  I  had  always 
taken  the  keenest  interest  in  writing  English.  Some 
little  kink  in  my  mind  has  always  made  the  writing 
of  prose  very  interesting  to  me.  I  began  first  to 
write  literary  articles,  criticism,  and  so  forth,  and  pre- 
sently short  imaginative  stories  in  which  I  made  use 
of  the  teeming  suggestions  of  modern  science.  There 
is  a  considerable  demand  for  this  sort  of  fiction  in 
Great  Britain  and  America,  and  my  first  book.  The 
Time  Machine,  published  in  1895,  attracted  consider- 
able attention ;  and  with  two  of  its  successors.  The 
War  of  the  Worlds  and  The  Invisible  Man,  gave  me  a 
sufficient  popularity  to  enable  me  to  devote  myself 
exclusively,  and  with  a  certain  sense  of  security,  to 
purely  literary  work. 

It  is  not  often  that  we  find  a  literary  man 
telling  the  truth  about  himself  with  such 
candour,  and  all  of  us  will  agree  that  Mr.  Wells 
is  to  be  congratulated  upon  his  honesty.  He 
seems  proud  of  belonging  to  the  middle  class 
which,  as  he  says  quite  correctly,  is  "  indefi- 
nite,'* and  he  does  not  seem  to  care  whether 
there  were  any  men  or  women  of  culture  among 
his  ancestors  or  not.  Then  he  found  that  there 
was  an  ordinary  commercial  '*  demand  *'  for  a 
certain  class  of  scientific  literature,  and  he  did 
what  he  could  to  supply  it,  the  result  being 
popularity. 

242 


H.  G.   WELLS 


Mr.   Wells,   unfortunately,   has   never   quite 
shaken  off  the   influence   of  this  middle-class 
upbringing ;    he   belongs  emphatically  to   the 
intellectual  bourgeoisie.     His   works   are,   like 
the    middle    class,    rather    **  indefinite,"    and 
indeed  he  speaks  of  himself,  in  the  article  from 
which  I  quote,  as  an  unsettled  man.     Like  the 
middle    classes    in  most  countries,   but   more 
particularly  in   England,   he   appears   to  have 
a    well-developed    commercial  mind — a  factor 
which  does  not  usually  help  a  man  to  develop 
his  artistic  talents.     In  a  previous  book  which 
I  wrote  on  the  subject  of  Tory  democracy,  I 
have  endeavoured  to  analyse  the  psychology 
of  the  middle  classes,  and  it  is  not  worth  while 
giving  a  further  detailed  account  of  it  here. 
Briefly,  it  may  be  said  that  the  commercial 
classes — ^who  in  England,  of  course,  are  almost 
entirely  comprised  within  the  middle  classes — 
being  materialists,  seek  almost  unconsciously 
an  idealistic  philosophy  or  an  idealistic  religion 
as  an  antidote  to,  or  as  a  brake  upon,  their 
everyday    instincts.     Wherever    a    people    de- 
votes its  serious  attention  to  trade — as  in  Ger- 
many, the  United  States,  the  British  Colonies, 
and  Great    Britain  herself  —  we    shall  always 
find  that   the   middle  classes  predominate    in 

243 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

that  people,  i.e.  they  control  the  politics  of 
the  State  and  ''  run  '*  the  State  for  the  benefit 
of  the  trading  classes  rather  than  for  the  benefit 
of  the  working  people  or  the  landowners.  The 
history  of  England  since  1832,  the  history  of  the 
United  States  since  the  Civil  War,  and  the  his- 
tory of  Germany  since  1871,  will  afford  detailed 
illustrations  of  the  truth  of  these  remarks. 

Now  Mr.  Wells,  as  he  himself  has  told  us, 
belongs  to  the  middle  class,  and,  as  I  have 
already  said,  he  has  never  entirely  shaken  off 
its  influence.  When  he  thinks  he  is  dealing 
with  humanity  he  is  almost  invariably  dealing 
with  middle-class  humanity,  a  class  which  in 
his  novels  includes  all  his  prominent  characters, 
from  Remington,  the  alleged  statesman,  to 
Kipps,  the  draper*s  drudge.  The  middle  classes 
being  sentimental  and  idealistic,  Mr.  Wells  is 
also  sentimental  and  idealistic — especially  in 
matters  relating  to  love  and  sex.  But  the 
importance  thus  attributed  to  sex  is  likewise 
a  feature  of  the  middle-class  intellect. 

I  need  hardly  say  that  the  influences  I  have 
referred  to  may  be  traced  just  as  much  in 
their  effects  on  Mr.  Wells  the  social  reformer 
as  in  their  effects  on  Mr.  Wells  the  novelist. 
I   think  he    must   have   drifted   towards   the 

244 


H.   G.   WELLS 


Fabian  Society  as  the  result  of  that  magnetic 
bourgeois  atmosphere  which  has  always  sur- 
rounded the  various  groups  of  Fabians,  and 
Mr.  Wells,  if  my  memory  serves  me  correctly, 
finally  severed  his  connection  with  the  Fabian 
Society  because  it  was  not  quite  middle-class 
enough  for  him.  Some  time  after  the  1906 
election,  it  was  proposed  that  the  Fabians 
should  more  definitely  ally  themselves  with  the 
Labour  Party  in  the  House  of  Commons  in 
order  to  carry  on  their  propaganda.  This  pro- 
posal was  resisted  by  many  influential  members 
of  the  Society  on  the  perfectly  just  and  reason- 
able ground  that  the  Fabians  were  desirous 
of  promoting  the  advancement  of  Socialism, 
whereas  the  Labour  Party  had  shown  a  distinct 
inclination  to  ally  themselves  with  the  Liberals, 
thereby  furthering  the  interests  of  the  trading 
classes  rather  than  of  the  workmen.  That  this 
view  was  the  more  correct  one  was  sufliciently 
evidenced  in  1911,  when,  both  on  the  occasion 
of  the  London  Dock  strike  and  on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  railway  strike  later  in  the  year,  the 
working  men  were  deliberately  betrayed  by  the 
alleged  representatives  of  labour  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  who  ably  assisted  the  Govern- 
ment  in    bringing   the    disputes  to  a   speedy 

245 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

termination,  irrespective  of  the  claims  of  the 
men.  When  the  original  proposal  was  made 
to  ally  the  Fabians  with  the  Labour  Party,  Mr. 
Shaw  had  the  prescience  to  see  that  such  a 
move  would  hinder  the  attainment  of  the  pur- 
pose for  which  the  Fabian  Society  was  formed, 
and  he  therefore  decided  against  it.  Mr.  Shaw 
was,  and  remains,  much  less  of  a  middle-class 
man  than  Mr.  Wells,  who  embraced  this  proposal 
with  much  enthusiasm.  It  was  defeated,  how- 
ever, and  Mr.  Wells  soon  afterwards  resigned  his 
membership  of  the  Fabian  Society.  I  merely 
refer  to  this  trifling  incident  to  show  that  Mr. 
Wells,  whether  as  social  reformer,  novelist,  or 
thinker,  has  always  remained  susceptible  to  his 
early  influences. 

Mr.  Wells's  views  on  the  ideal  State  can  be 
gleaned  from  his  sociological  books,  such  as 
First  and  Last  Things,  Anticipations,  Mankind 
in  the  Making,  and  A  Modern  Utopia  ;  but  so 
far  as  practical  politics  are  concerned  he  has 
given  an  adequate  explanation  of  his  views  in 
Volume  II  of  The  New  Age  (January  ii,  1908): 
'*  The  land,''  he  says,  '*  and  all  sorts  of  great 
common  interests  must  be,  if  not  owned,  then 
at  least  controlled,  managed,  checked,  redis- 
tributed by  the  State."     He  does  not  mind  the 

246 


H.   G.   WELLS 


common  man  owning  something,  but  he  must 
not  own  it  individually ;  he  must  own  it 
collectively.  And  of  course  he  has  said  some- 
thing in  this  article  about  the  wrong  sort  of 
individuality,  something  which  we  might  expect 
to  find  in  the  claptrap  of  Jeremy  Bentham  or 
the  worst  essays  of  J.  S.  Mill:  ''I  aim  at  a 
growing  collective  life,  a  perpetual  enhanced 
inheritance  for  our  race  through  the  fullest, 
freest  development  of  the  individual  life."  In 
other  words,  Mr.  Wells  here  shows  himself  to 
be  a  supporter  of  the  modern  capitalistic  State, 
so  ably  philosophised  about  by  staunch  Radicals 
like  Mill  and  Lord  Morley,  as  against  the  more 
human  State  that  Burke  had  in  mind.  Time 
will  make  it  clearer  and  clearer  that  the  indivi- 
dualism advocated  by  Mr.  Wells  inevitably 
leads  to  the  evils  which  he  is  so  anxious  to 
eradicate.  If  a  State  is  founded  on  an  indi- 
vidualistic basis  it  is  understood  that  every  one 
has  individual  freedom  to  exploit  every  one  else, 
and  it  is  this  Liberal  principle  which  has  led 
to  the  great  evil  of  capitalism  in  England,  and 
all  the  other  evils  such  as  slums,  overcrowded 
dwellings,  and  underpaid  labour  which  inevit- 
ably arise  under  a  capitalistic  system.  The  true 
social  reformer,  of  course,  no  longer  holds  that 

247 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

unlimited  individual  freedom  is  necessary  or 
desirable.  He  insists,  like  the  Catholic  Church, 
upon  a  well-defined  hierarchy  and  implicit 
obedience  to  leaders.  One  effect  of  hierarchy 
within  a  State,  presuming  that  the  philosophy 
of  individualism  were  thrown  over  for  the 
philosophy  of  leadership  and  subordination, 
would  be  the  organisation  of  trades  and  crafts  in 
the  old  form  of  guilds,  the  consequent  raising  of 
the  status  of  the  workman,  and  a  considerable 
mitigation  of  the  evils  of  poverty.  The  only 
one  to  suffer  under  such  a  system  would  be  the 
over-wealthy  capitalist,  who,  under  the  plan 
advocated  so  ably  by  Mr.  Wells,  would  merely 
have  additional  opportunities  of  exploiting  his 
workmen  and  adding  to  his  gains. 

In  fairness  to  Mr.  Wells,  however,  it  must  be 
said  that  he  seems  to  have  recognised  his  failure 
as  a  social  reformer,  and  latterly  he  has  devoted 
his  mind  less  and  less  to  purely  sociological 
problems.  In  appearance,  as  he  has  himself  told 
us,  he  is  a  man  of  diffident  and  ineffectual 
presence,  easily  bored  by  other  than  literary 
effort,  so  that,  to  use  his  own  expression,  he  is 
not  tempted  to  cut  a  figure  in  the  world  and 
abandon  his  work  of  observing  and  writing. 
We  can  clearly  recognise,  therefore,  that  a  man 

248 


H.   G.   WELLS 


of  his  disposition  would  not  be  likely  to  stand 
much  chance  at  a  committee  meeting  of  the 
Fabian  Society. 

Mr.  Wells,  then,  has  no  particular  message 
to  give  to  the  world  in  his  capacity  of  social 
reformer,  and  as  a  novelist  a  severe  critic  would 
not  call  him  a  great  writer.  Why  then,  it 
may  be  asked,  did  he  obtain  popularity  with 
such  comparative  ease,  and  why  is  he  so  widely 
read  ?  It  is  no  doubt  superfluous  for  me  to 
reply  that  a  writer  need  not  necessarily  be  an 
artist  to  appeal  to  the  crowd.  Mr.  Wells,  in- 
deed, has  already  told  us  the  secret  of  his  own 
success.  He  found  that  there  was  a  demand 
for  scientific  stories  of  a  particular  type,  and 
he  supplied  it.  The  result  was  naturally  the 
popularity  he  sought.  Indeed,  if  we  consider 
Mr.  Wells's  novels  from  a  non-artistic  stand- 
point, there  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  for  them. 
The  average  reader  does  not  know  much  about 
art,  and  he  will  never  observe  the  lack  of  it  in 
his  books.  Their  scientific  plots  will  attract 
him  by  the  charm  of  novelty  and,  although  I 
have  compared  Mr.  Wells  to  Jules  Verne,  I 
have  stated  that  his  mind  has  a  wider  range. 
In  The  New  Machiavelli,  and  in  The  Sea  Lady, 
for  example,   we    find  occasional  traces  of  a 

249 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

delicate  gift  of  satire,  and  of  this  satire  we  find 
more  than  a  mere  trace  in  The  Wonderful  Visit. 
The  Angel  cannot  become  a  gentleman,  and 
Mr.  Wells  shows  us  how  in  quite  a  convincing 
fashion.  Besides,  the  Englishman  can  always 
be  '*  got  at ''  on  his  sentimental  side,  and  Mr. 
Wells  knows  how  to  appeal  to  him  here.  The 
love  scenes  in  Kipps  and  Tono  Bungay  may  be 
bad  art,  but  the  average  library  subscriber 
would  doubtless  pronounce  them  to  be  devilish 
good  reading.  George  Ponderevo's  wife,  too, 
is  a  common  type  of  woman  who  has  seldom 
been  so  well  described,  and  the  little  incident 
about  the  use  of  the  name  Ponderevo  by  Marion's 
firm  after  she  married  a  second  time  shows  what 
attention  Mr.  Wells  pays  to  detail.  Again  the 
little,  carefully-chosen  pieces  of  mosaic,  to  which 
I  have  already  referred,  will  find  numerous  ad- 
mirers. What,  for  example,  could  be  more  excel- 
lent in  its  way  than  the  description  of  the  mate 
when  he  pronounces  his  opinion  of  the  captain : 

"  That's  what  'e  is— a  Dago  !  " 

He  nodded  like  a  man  who  gives  a  last  tap  to  a 
nail,  and  I  could  see  he  considered  his  remark  well 
and  truly  laid.  His  face,  though  still  resolute,  became 
as  tranquil  and  uneventful  as  a  huge  hall  after  a 
public  meeting  has  dispersed  out  of  it,  and  finally  he 
closed  and  locked  it  with  his  pipe. 

In  truth,   there   are  now  two  publics,   the 
250 


H.   G.   WELLS 


cultured  public  which  can  appreciate  the  work 
of  an  artist,  a  public  which  will  instinctively 
pay  attention  to  such  things  as  form,  style, 
technique,  and  judge  the  work  accordingly. 
There  is  the  other  public,  the  rapidly  growing 
middle-class  public,  the  public  which  nearly  all 
our  modern  writers  appeal  to.  This  public  does 
not  appreciate  art  and  does  not  want  art,  but 
merely  asks  of  a  book,  *'  Is  it  interesting  ? '' 
And  if  the  answer  is  in  the  affirmative  the 
book  sells.  Mr.  Wells  was  confronted  with 
these  two  publics,  and  he  made  his  choice. 

As  a  man  of  observation,  Mr.  Wells  could 
hardly  help  interesting  himself  for  a  time  at 
any  rate  in  problems  of  social  reform.  He 
could  not  fail  to  be  struck  with  the  evidences 
of  poverty  which  present  so  ghastly  a  spectacle 
in  every  town  in  Great  Britain,  and  we  need 
therefore  hardly  be  surprised  to  find  that  he 
joined  the  Fabian  Society.  Hearing  modern 
problems  of  sociology  and  economics  discussed, 
as  he  did,  either  by  members  of  the  Fabian 
Society  or  by  non-members  who  had  the  Fabian 
type  of  mind,  it  is  not  remarkable  that  he 
allowed  his  scientific  imagination  to  wander 
into  the  rather  prosaic  realms  of  statecraft, 
and  to  weave  fancies  regarding  the  organisation 

251 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

of  ideal  States.     But  here   again,  as   I   have 
pointed  out,   he  has  been  greatly  influenced 
by  middle-classism.    There  is  a  startling  foot- 
note on  page  163  of  Anticipations,  in  which  he 
refers  to  **  my  own  culture  and  turn  of  mind, 
which  is  probably  akin  to  that  of  a  respectable 
mechanic  of  the  year  2000."     I  speak  of  this 
little  footnote  as  *'  startling,"  because  so  many 
of  Mr.  Wells's  admirers  insist  on  calling  him  an 
artist,  and  if  there  is  any  being  who  is  at  the 
diametrically  opposite  pole  to  an  artist  it  is  a 
mechanic,  or  any  one  with  a  mind  interested  in 
mechanics.    There  is  not  so  much  difference 
between  the  mind  of  the  mechanic  of  1900  and 
the  mind  of  the  mechanic  of  1800,  or  for  that 
matter  of  1700.    We  might  go  back  to  Sal- 
moneus,  indeed,  and  still  find  the  same  type  of 
mind.    There  seems  no  reason  for  supposing, 
therefore,  that  the  mechanic  of  the  year  2000 
will  have  made  any  great  advance  in  philosophy 
or  anything  else.     I  fear  indeed  that  Mr.  Wells 
can   hardly   believe    in   his   own   footnote — it 
sounds  much  too  good  to  be  true.     But  if  he 
still  holds  by  it,  and  by  his  remarks  on  supply 
and  demand,  allow  me  to  submit  to  him  an  ex- 
tract fromDr.  Johnson's  dictionary:  '*  Mechanick, 
n.s.    A  manufacturer  ;  a  low  workman.*' 
252 


CHAPTER    VIII 

GEORGE   GISSING 

When  we  have  long  been  accustomed  to  reading 
the  works  of  men  who  have  no  particular 
conception  of  art,  who  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously appeal  to  the  largest  possible  public 
and  entirely  neglect  the  kindly  influences  of 
culture,  it  is  with  some  relief  that  we  turn  to 
the  writings  of  a  man  who  was  acquainted  with 
art,  and  who  held  very  definite  notions,  which 
he  faithfully  endeavoured  to  carry  into  practice, 
regarding  form  and  technique,  especially  if  such 
a  man  did  not  attempt  to  appeal  to  the  general 
public,  or  even  to  a  large  section  of  it,  but 
deliberately  endured  poverty  in  its  worst  form 
rather  than  yield  to  the  solicitations  of  his 
friends  and  publishers  to  *'  write  something '' 
that  would  meet  with  a  response  from  a  wider 
circle.  There  were  indeed  very  few  such  men 
among  English  authors  of  the  latter  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  but  one  of  them,  at 
any   rate,  was  George  Robert   Gissing,  whose 

253 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

career  I  hope  no  artist  can  contemplate  without 
feelings  of  sympathy  and  respect,  feelings  which 
will  nevertheless  be  tinctured  with  no  small 
proportion  of  that  bleak  despair  which  is  so 
prominent  a  feature  in  Gissing's  own  life,  and 
also  in  nearly  every  one  of  the  characters  he 
drew. 

Not  that  Gissing  lived  in  any  very  peculiar 
world.  He  was  born  in  Wakefield  in  1857, 
and  drifted  to  London  in  his  early  twenties. 
At  school  he  had  read  and  studied  incessantly, 
so  much  indeed  as  to  undermine  a  constitution 
which  does  not  appear  at  any  time  to  have 
been  particularly  robust ;  nor  did  his  early 
life  in  London  tend  to  build  up  his  health.  It 
was  not  merely  that  he  was  a  poor  man ;  his  life 
was  rather  almost  that  of  a  beggar.  He  lived  in 
a  garret  when  he  was  what  he  considered  as 
fairly  well  off,  and  when  money  was  less  plenti- 
ful, he  descended  to  the  cheaper  accommodation 
of  the  cellar.  His  furniture  seldom  consisted 
of  more  than  a  table,  a  chair,  and  a  bed,  but  he 
invariably  kept  with  him  a  shelf-full  of  Latin 
and  Greek  classics.  He  had  all  the  true  in- 
stincts of  the  classical  scholar,  and  preferred  old 
quarto  editions,  with  ponderous  Latin  notes, 
to  the  smaller  and  more  convenient  modern 

254 


GEORGE    GISSING 


reprints.  ''  Even  the  best  editions  of  our  day 
have  so  much  of  the  mere  school-book/*  he 
complains  in  The  Private  Papers  of  Henry 
Ryecroft ;  ''  you  feel  so  often  that  the  man 
does  not  regard  his  author  as  literature,  but 
simply  as  text.  Pedant  for  pedant,  the  old  is 
better  than  the  new.'* 

Henry  Ryecroft,  an  autobiographical  book  if 
ever  there  was  one,  overflows  with  memories 
of  Gissing's  own  poverty-stricken  days  in  Lon- 
don, and  at  the  same  time  indicates  the  tempera- 
ment of  the  true  scholar  and  lover  of  books. 
Like  many  another  man  before  his  time,  and 
since,  he  often  hesitated  between  buying  a 
cheap  lunch  and  a  second-hand  edition  of  some 
classic,  and,  as  almost  invariably  happens  in 
such  cases,  the  intellectual  fare  came  off  vic- 
torious. Hear  what  Ryecroft,  writing  under 
the  heading  of  ''  Spring,**  has  to  say  about  the 
purchase  of  one  of  Gissing*s  books  : 

Dozens  of  my  books  were  purchased  with  money 
which  ought  to  have  been  spent  upon  what  are  called 
the  necessaries  of  Hfe.  Many  a  time  I  have  stood 
before  a  stall,  or  a  bookseller's  window,  torn  by  con- 
flict of  intellectual  desire  and  bodily  need.  At  the 
very  hour  of  dinner,  when  my  stomach  clamoured  for 
food,  I  have  been  stopped  by  sight  of  a  volume  so 
long  coveted,  and  marked  at  so  advantageous  a  price, 
that  I  could  not  let  it  go  ;  yet  to  buy  it  meant  pangs 

255 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


of  famine.  My  Heyne's  Tibullus  was  grasped  at 
such  a  moment.  It  lay  on  the  stall  of  the  old  book- 
shop in  Goodge  Street — a  stall  where  now  and  then 
one  found  an  excellent  thing  among  quantities  of 
rubbish.  Sixpence  was  the  price — sixpence  !  At  that 
time  I  used  to  eat  my  midday  meal  (of  course  my 
dinner)  at  a  coffee-shop  in  Oxford  Street,  one  of  the 
real  old  coffee  shops,  such  as  now,  I  suppose,  can 
hardly  be  found.  Sixpence  was  all  I  had — yes,  all  I 
had  in  the  world  ;  it  would  purchase  a  plate  of  meat 
and  vegetables.  But  I  did  not  dare  to  hope  that  the 
Tibullus  would  wait  until  the  morrow,  when  a  certain 
small  sum  fell  due  to  me.  I  paced  the  pavement, 
fingering  the  coppers  in  my  pocket,  eyeing  the  stall, 
two  appetites  at  combat  within  me.  The  book  was 
bought  and  I  went  home  with  it,  and  as  I  made  a 
dinner  of  bread  and  butter  I  gloated  over  the  pages. 

This  was  Gissing's  temperament  through  and 
through,  the  temperament  of  the  scholar  cast 
on  evil  days  and  sad  surroundings.  It  is  like- 
wise the  main  theme  of  many  of  Gissing's  books 
— it  was,  in  fact,  the  one  great  theme  which 
he  always  had  in  mind  when  he  wrote.  Seldom 
indeed  did  he  write  a  book  without  including 
among  the  characters  some  artistic  scholar, 
living,  working,  struggling  for  an  existence  in 
some  uncongenial  environment.  Kingscote  in 
Isabel  Clarendon,  Reardon  in  New  Grub  Street, 
and  Henry  Ryecroft  himself  are  all  types  of 
the  Gissing  scholar.  Many  more  could  be 
mentioned,  and  their  names  will  readily  occur 

256 


GEORGE    GISSING 


to  any  lover  of  Gissing.  There  is,  for  example, 
Alfred  Yule,  an  epigone  who  should  have  been 
born  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  there  is 
again  yet  another  distinct  type  in  Biffin.  The 
discerning  reader,  I  think,  will  find  that  Gissing 
is  represented  in  them  all.  For  many  years  of 
his  life  in  London  he  was  compelled  to  live  as 
Biffin  lived — endeavouring  to  eke  out  a  very 
modest  and  limited  livelihood  by  teaching  the 
aspiring  sons  of  working  men  the  elements  of 
culture,  giving  his  attention  between  times, 
with  all  the  love  of  an  artist,  to  the  novel  he 
was  trying  to  complete  and  to  make  as  perfect 
as  possible,  recreating  himself  now  and  again 
as  best  he  might  with  a  dip  into  one  of  his  old 
quarto  classics,  at  times  simply  reading  the  lines 
aloud  to  himself  or  occasionally  to  some  friend 
in  equally  reduced  circumstances  who  happened 
to  share  his  tastes. 

I  have  said  that  Gissing's  main  theme  is  the 
life  of  a  man  of  culture  spent  amid  uncongenial 
surroundings.  It  was  a  theme  about  which 
Gissing  could  always  write  with  energy,  though 
often  with  the  energy  of  desperation.  He  was 
himself  a  thorough  artist,  and  his  wide  reading 
in  the  classics  and  modern  English  and  Con- 
tinental authors  had  confirmed  him  in  his 
17  257 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

scholarly  pursuits  and  rendered  him  absolutely 
unfitted  to  take  any  part  in  a  commercial  exis- 
tence. On  the  whole,  he  seems  to  have  fared 
well  at  the  hands  of  his  publishers,  who  probably 
acted  as  well  as  they  were  able  towards  a  writer 
whose  *'  output '' — to  use  a  hideous  commercial 
expression  in  which  modern  artists  seem  to 
delight — was  relatively  small.  In  1880  Gissing 
published  his  first  book,  Workers  in  the  Dawn, 
which  was  not  followed  by  The  Unclassed 
until  1884.  One  of  his  most  powerful  novels, 
Isabel  Clarendon,  followed  in  1886,  and  in  the 
same  year  appeared  Demos.  This  latter  book 
brought  Gissing' s  name  before  a  rather  wider 
public  than  his  previous  works  had  appealed  to  ; 
but  it  was  a  book  which  he  himself  disliked. 
He  had  experimented  in  it  to  see  what  he  could 
do  in  the  way  of  a  melodramatic  tale,  and  the 
result,  though  pleasing  to  the  public,  was  far 
from  satisfactory  to  the  author,  who  put  his 
art  before  everything.  It  brought  him,  how- 
ever, the  sum  of  fifty  pounds  down,  and  this 
money  enabled  him  to  carry  out  the  desire 
which  he  had  long  tried  to  gratify.  Husband- 
ing his  resources  as  best  he  could,  he  made 
straight  for  Italy,  and  so  well  did  he  economise 
that  he  was  able  to  visit  Athens  before  returning 
258 


GEORGE    GISSING 


to  the  smoke  and  fogs  of  London  and  the 
lower-middle-class  environment  which  he  de- 
tested with  a  peculiar  loathing.  The  memory 
of  this  first  visit  to  what  he  justly  regarded  as 
one  of  the  few  lands  of  culture  remaining  in 
Europe  never  left  him.  We  see  the  influence  of 
it  in  some  passages  in  New  Grub  Street,  just  as 
the  same  passages  expose  to  us  one  of  Gissing's 
very  few  defects.  When  Reardon  has  sunk  as 
low  as  he  can  in  the  intellectual  scale,  when 
he  has  definitely  decided  to  abandon  creative 
work  altogether,  and  to  take  up  a  very  much 
underpaid  hospital  clerkship,  he  falls  in  with 
Biffin.  It  is  characteristic  that  at  this  meeting, 
when  their  fortunes  were  at  their  nadir,  Gissing 
should  have  made  the  worthy  couple  discuss, 
not  the  means  of  raising  money,  not  even 
Reardon's  domestic  calamities,  but  the  frag- 
ments of  Euripides.  After  a  word  or  two,  then, 
about  his  wife.  Amy,  Reardon  breaks  out  again : 

"  The  best  moments  of  life  are  those  when  we  con- 
template beauty  in  the  purely  artistic  spirit — objec- 
tively. I  have  had  such  moments  in  Greece  and 
Italy  ;  times  when  I  was  a  free  spirit,  utterly  remote 
from  the  temptations  and  harassings  of  sexual  emotion. 
What  we  call  love  is  mere  turmoil.  Who  wouldn't  re- 
lease himself  from  it  for  ever,  if  the  possibility  offered  ?  " 

"Oh,  there's  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  that,  of 
course." 

259 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Reardon's  face  was  illumined  with  the  glow  of  an 
exquisite  memory. 

"  Haven't  I  told  you,"  he  said,  *'  of  that  marvellous 
sunset  at  Athens  ?  I  was  on  the  Pnyx  ;  had  been 
rambling  about  there  the  whole  afternoon.  For  I 
daresay  a  couple  of  hours  I  had  noticed  a  growing  rift 
of  light  in  the  clouds  to  the  west ;  it  looked  as  if  the 
dull  day  might  have  a  rich  ending.  That  rift  grew 
broader  and  brighter — the  only  bit  of  light  in  the  sky. 
On  Parnes  there  were  white  strips  of  ragged  mist, 
hanging  very  low  ;  the  same  on  Hymettus,  and  even 
the  peak  of  Lycabettus  was  just  hidden.  Of  a  sudden, 
the  sun's  rays  broke  out.  They  showed  themselves 
first  in  a  strangely  beautiful  way,  striking  from  behind 
the  seaward  hills  through  the  pass  that  leads  to 
Eleusis,  and  so  gleaming  on  the  nearer  slopes  of 
Aigaleos,  making  the  clefts  black  and  the  rounded 
parts  of  the  mountain  wonderfully  brilliant  with 
golden  colour.  All  the  rest  of  the  landscape,  remem- 
ber, was  untouched  with  a  ray  of  light.  This  lasted 
only  a  minute  or  two,  then  the  sun  itself  sank  into  the 
open  patch  of  sky  and  shot  glory  in  every  direction  ; 
broadening  beams  smote  upwards  over  the  dark  clouds, 
and  made  them  a  lurid  yellow.  To  the  left  of  the  sun, 
the  Gulf  of  iEgina  was  all  golden  mist,  the  islands 
floating  in  it  vaguely.  To  the  right,  over  black 
Salamis,  lay  delicate  strips  of  pale  blue — indescribably 
pale  and  delicate." 

"  You  remember  it  very  clearly." 

**  As  if  I  saw  it  now  !  But  wait.  I  turned  east- 
ward, and  there  to  my  astonishment  was  a  magnificent 
rainbow,  a  perfect  semi-circle,  stretching  from  the 
foot  of  Parnes  to  that  of  Hymettus,  framing  Athens 
and  its  hills,  which  grew  brighter  and  brighter — the 
brightness  for  which  there  is  no  name  among  colours. 
Hymettus  was  of  a  soft  misty  warmth,  a  something 
tending  to  purple,  its  ridges  marked  by  exquisitely 

260 


GEORGE    GISSING 


soft  and  indefinite  shadows,  the  rainbow  coming  right 
down  in  front.  The  AcropoHs  simply  glowed  and 
blazed.  As  the  sun  descended  all  these  colours  grew 
richer  and  warmer ;  for  a  moment  the  landscape 
was  nearly  crimson.  Then  suddenly  the  sun  passed 
into  the  lower  stratum  of  cloud,  and  the  splendour 
died  almost  at  once,  except  that  there  remained  the 
northern  half  of  the  rainbow,  which  had  become  double. 
In  the  west,  the  clouds  were  still  glorious  for  a  time  ; 
there  were  two  shaped  like  great  expanded  wings, 
edged  with  refulgence." 

This  is  undoubtedly  one  of  Gissing^s  best 
descriptive  passages,  and  the  sudden  contrast 
when  we  once  more  find  ourselves  back  in  the 
London  slums  is  very  striking. 

The  weakness  of  Gissing  I  have  mentioned 
lies,  as  may  be  guessed,  in  his  belittling  of  the 
sexual  instinct.  The  effects  of  sex  on  culture 
have  been  apparent  from  the  remotest  ages, 
and  Nietzsche  was  right  in  emphasising  them 
as  he  did  in  his  various  books.  We  may  under- 
stand Gissing's  temperament  in  this  respect 
when  we  consider  the  existence  he  led.  His 
delicate  constitution  was  weakened  by  starva- 
tion in  London,  and  the  women  whom  he  met 
were  doubtless  not  particularly  attractive.  We 
know  how  little  attractive  they  were,  indeed, 
when  we  consider  how  remorselessly  he  has 
depicted  so  many  types  of  them — the  rather 

261 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

harsh  and  selfish  Amy  Reardon,  Maud  and 
Dora  Milvain,  Mrs.  Alfred  Yule,  and  Amy's 
mother  in  New  Grub  Street ;  the  Misses  Madden, 
Miss  Barfoot,  and  Mrs.  Luke  in  The  Odd 
Women ;  Amy  Hewett  and  Mrs.  Peckover  in 
The  Nether  World  ;  Miss  Waghorn  in  The  Town 
Traveller ;  Mrs.  Peak  in  Born  in  Exile ;  and 
numerous  other  instances  which  could  easily 
be  adduced.  When  dealing  with  men  and 
women  of  the  lower  middle  class,  indeed,  Gis- 
sing  is  entirely  in  his  element,  and  he  has,  in 
my  opinion,  failed  in  his  very  few  books,  like 
Our  Friend  the  Charlatan,  where  he  takes  him- 
self and  his  reader  into  the  upper  strata  of 
society. 

Of  Gissing  more  perhaps  than  of  any  other 
man  of  equal  sensibility  can  we  say  that  the 
iron  entered  his  soul.  In  one  of  his  auto- 
biographical novels,  viz..  Born  in  Exile,  the 
wants  and  longings  of  the  hero,  Godfrey 
Peak,  are  the  wants  and  longings  of  George 
Gissing,  and  few  of  them  indeed  was  he  able 
to  secure.  Young  Peak  wishes  to  travel,  to 
frequent  the  society  of  pretty  women,  to  be- 
long to  a  good  club,  to  be  able  to  go  to  Paris 
and  be  enchanted  in  the  Comedie  Fran^aise,  or 
to  go  to  Vienna  and  be  equally  enchanted  in 

262 


GEORGE    GISSING 


the  Court  Opera.  Added  to  this,  of  course,  he 
has  the  customary  tastes  of  a  scholar  and  would 
like  to  be  able  to  lead  at  times  a  quiet  comfort- 
able existence,  surrounded  by  piles  of  well- 
bound  classical  authors.  Instead  of  this,  like 
Gissing  himself,  we  find  him  in  obscure  London 
lodgings  with  Homer  and  Shakespeare  and  two 
or  three  other  books  huddled  up  on  a  small 
deal  table,  surrounded,  to  quote  a  passage  in 
the  book,  ''  by  lying,  slandering,  quarrelling, 
by  drunkenness,  by  brutal  vice,  by  all  abomina- 
tions that  distinguish  the  lodging-letter  of  the 
metropolis.*'  In  the  most  powerful  novel  Gis- 
sing ever  wrote,  New  Grub  Street,  there  are 
many  similar  passages.  It  was  the  very  at- 
mosphere amid  which  he  was  compelled  to 
live  that  led  him  to  attach  what  many  of  his 
readers  and  critics  will  doubtless  consider  as 
exaggerated  importance  to  the  external  appear- 
ances of  refinement — a  well-cut  overcoat,  boots 
that  did  not  leak,  a  collar  which  was  not 
falling  to  pieces,  and  an  occasional  clean  shirt. 
No  wonder  Mr.  Thomas  Seccombe,  in  his  intro- 
duction to  The  House  of  Cobwebs,  emphasised 
the  importance  of  Gissing's  having  described 
a  certain  heroine  as  exhibiting  in  her  counten- 
ance   *'  habitual    nourishment    on    good    and 

263 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

plenteous  food/'  The  full  force  of  this  poig- 
nant passage,  I  may  be  allowed  to  add,  lies 
in  that  word  ''  habitual/'  Gissing  himself 
occasionally  got  good  food,  but  it  was  seldom 
plenteous,  and  until  late  in  his  short  life  it  was 
certainly  never  habitual. 

After  some  experience  of  this  life  in  London, 
Gissing  managed  to  save  enough  money  to  take 
him  to  the  United  States.  Here  he  thought 
he  could  do  better  by  private  teaching,  but 
luck  was  once  more  against  him,  and  we  soon 
find  him  back  in  London.  When  Whelpdale  in 
New  Grub  Street  mentions  casually  that  he  lived 
for  some  days  on  pea-nuts,  it  may  be  definitely 
assumed  that  the  incident  is  no  mere  creation 
of  the  author's  fancy.  A  far  cry  this  from  his 
ideals  as  expressed  through  the  mouth  of 
Joseph  Milvain  in  the  same  book  : 

My  aim  is  to  have  easy  command  of  all  the  pleasures 
desired  by  a  cultivated  man.  I  want  to  live  among 
beautiful  things,  and  never  to  be  troubled  by  a 
thought  of  vulgar  difficulties.  I  want  to  travel  and 
enrich  my  mind  in  foreign  countries.  I  want  to 
associate  on  equal  terms  with  refined  and  interesting 
people.  I  want  to  be  known,  to  be  familiarly  re- 
ferred to,  to  feel  when  I  enter  a  room  that  people 
regard  me  with  some  curiosity.  .  .  .  My  instincts  are 
strongly  social,  yet  I  can't  be  at  my  ease  in  society, 
simply  because  I  can't  do  justice  to  myself.    Want  of 

264 


GEORGE    GISSING 


money  makes  me  the  inferior  of  the  people  I  talk  with, 
though  I  might  be  superior  to  them  in  most  things. 
I  am  ignorant  in  many  ways,  and  merely  because  I 
am  poor.  Imagine  my  never  having  been  out  of 
England  !  It  shames  me  when  people  talk  familiarly 
of  the  Continent.  So  with  regard  to  all  manner  of 
amusements  and  pursuits  at  home.  Impossible  for 
me  to  appear  among  my  acquaintances  at  the  theatre, 
at  concerts.  I  am  perpetually  at  a  disadvantage  ;  I 
haven't  fair  play.  Suppose  me  possessed  of  money 
enough  to  live  a  full  and  active  life  for  the  next  five 
years  ;  why,  at  the  end  of  that  time  my  position 
would  be  secure.  To  him  that  hath  shall  be  given — 
you  know  how  universally  true  that  is. 

Gissing  has  acknowledged  over  and  over 
again  that  his  great  master  in  the  novel  was 
Dickens  ;  but  Dickens,  who  had  no  regard  for 
form  and  never  attempted  to  write  a  work  of 
art  in  his  life,  did  not  exercise  any  inimical 
influence  on  Gissing  from  a  cultural  point  of 
view.  One  characteristic  of  Dickens  is  that  he 
brings  his  characters  to  a  happy  ending  as  a 
rule  :  or  when  he  does  not  their  fate,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  unfortunate  Nancy  or  little  Nell, 
is  at  least  surrounded  with  some  pathos.  Far 
different  is  the  case  with  Gissing's  characters. 
A  happy  ending  with  him  is  quite  the  exception, 
and  where  he  does  give  us  a  happy  ending,  as 
in  the  case  of  Demos,  we  see  only  too  obviously 
that  it  is  forced,  artificial,  and  in  opposition  to 

265 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

the  instinct  of  the  author.  Dickens  loved  all 
his  characters,  even  the  lowest ;  there  is  some- 
thing good-humoured  or  at  all  events  attractive 
about  such  people  as  Sam  Weller,  Bumble, 
and  even  the  Artful  Dodger  and  Charlie  Bates. 
Gissing,  on  the  other  hand,  loathed  the  people 
among  whom  he  lived  and  whom  he  described 
with  such  vividness.  One  remark  of  Biffin's 
about  '*  conventionalism  '*  is  merely  very 
slightly  exaggerated  Gissing,  *'  No,  no,  let  us 
copy  life.  When  the  man  and  woman  are  to 
meet  for  a  great  scene  of  passion,  let  it  all  be 
frustrated  by  one  or  other  of  them  having  a 
bad  cold  in  the  head,  and  so  on.  Let  the  pretty 
girl  get  a  disfiguring  pimple  on  her  nose  just 
before  the  ball  at  which  she  is  going  to  shine. 
Show  the  numberless  repulsive  features  of 
common  decent  life.  Seriously,  coldly ;  not  a 
hint  of  facetiousness,  or  the  thing  becomes 
different.*'  Gissing  had  the  quick  eye,  the  in- 
stinctive knowledge  of  the  artist  for  every  one 
of  the  people  by  whom  he  was  surrounded.  As 
a  scholar  of  a  retiring  disposition  he  detested 
them,  as  a  man  of  insight  he  understood  them, 
and  as  a  man  of  superior  intelligence  he  des- 
pised them  utterly.  He  was  sufficiently  Chris- 
tian, or  at  all  events  he  had  sufficient  religious 
266 


GEORGE    GISSING 


sense  about  him,  to  guess  that  some  form  of 
religion  practically  applied  might  go  far  towards 
alleviating  such  misery.  He  poured  scorn  upon 
the  mere  atheist,  upon  men  like  Tom  the 
gardener  in  Our  Friend  the  Charlatan,  who  in 
private  calls  himself  ''  a  hagnostic."  And  in 
this  book,  too,  there  is  a  characteristic  Gissing 
tirade  about  Christianity.  Dyce  Lashmar  is 
speaking  to  his  father,  the  vicar  : 

"  Can  you  maintain,"  asked  Dyce  respectfully, 
"  that  Christianity  is  still  a  civilising  power  ?  " 

"  To  all  appearances,"  was  the  grave  answer,  *'  Chris- 
tianity has  failed — utterly,  absolutely,  glaringly  failed. 
At  this  moment  the  world,  I  am  convinced,  holds  more 
potential  barbarism  than  did  the  Roman  Empire 
under  the  Antonines.  Wherever  I  look,  I  see  a 
monstrous  contrast  between  the  professions  and  the 
practice,  between  the  assumed  and  the  actual  aims, 
of  so-called  Christian  peoples.  Christianity  has  failed 
to  conquer  the  human  heart." 

"It  must  be  very  dreadful  for  you  to  be  convinced 
of  that." 

"It  is.  But  more  dreadful  would  be  a  loss  of 
belief  in  the  Christian  spirit.  By  belief,  I  don't  mean 
faith  in  its  ultimate  triumph  ;  I  am  not  at  all  sure 
that  I  can  look  forward  to  that.  No  ;  but  a  persuasion 
that  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  good — is  the  best. 
Once  upon  a  time,  multitudes  were  in  that  sense 
Christian.  Nowadays,  does  one  man  in  a  thousand 
give  his  mind's  allegiance  (lips  and  life  disregarded) 
to  that  ideal  of  human  thought  and  conduct  ?  Take 
your  newspaper  writer,  who  speaks  to  and  for  the 

267 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

million  ;  he  simply  scorns  every  Christian  precept. 
How  can  he  but  scorn  a  thing  so  unpractical  ?  Nay, 
I  notice  that  he  is  already  throwing  off  the  hypocrisy 
hitherto  thought  decent.  I  read  newspaper  articles 
which  sneer  and  scoff  at  those  who  venture  to  remind 
the  world  that,  after  all,  it  is  nominally  in  the  service 
of  a  Christian  ideal.  Our  prophets  begin  openly  to 
proclaim  that  sell-interest  and  the  hardest  materialism 
are  our  only  safe  guides.  Now  and  then  such  passages 
amaze,  appal  me — but  I  am  getting  used  to  them. 
So  I  am  to  the  same  kind  of  declaration  in  every-day 
talk.  Men  in  most  respectable  coats,  sitting  at  most 
orderly  tables,  hold  the  language  of  pure  barbarism. 
If  you  drew  one  of  them  aside,  and  said  to  him,  '  But 
what  about  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit  ?  * — what  sort  of 
look  would  he  give  you  ?  " 

'*  I  agree  entirely,**  exclaimed  Dyce.  "  And  for 
that  very  reason  I  want  to  work  for  a  new  civilising 
principle.'* 

"  If  you  get  into  the  House,  shall  you  talk  there 
about  bio-sociology  ?  *' 

"  Why,  no,"  answered  Dyce,  with  a  chuckle.  *'  If 
I  were  capable  of  that,  I  should  have  very  little  chance 
of  getting  into  the  House  at  all,  or  of  doing  anything 
useful  anywhere." 

"  In  other  words,'*  said  his  father,  still  eyeing  an 
unlit  pipe,  **  one  must  be  practical — eh,  Dyce  ?  " 

"  In  the  right  way." 

"  Yes,  yes ;  one  must  be  practical,  practical.  If 
you  know  which  is  the  right  way,  I  am  very  glad — I 
congratulate  you.  For  my  own  part,  I  seek  it  vainly  ; 
I  seek  it  these  forty  years  and  more  ;  and  it  grows 
clear  to  me  that  I  should  have  done  much  better  not 
to  heed  that  question  at  all.  '  Blessed  are  the  merci- 
ful— blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart — blessed  are  the 
peacemakers.'  It  is  strikingly  unpractical,  Dyce,  my 
boy  ;    you  can't,  again  in  to-day's  sweet  language, 

268 


GEORGE   GISSING 


'  run  '  the  world  on  those  principles.    They  are  utterly 
incompatible  with  business  ;  and  business  is  life." 

There  is  a  very  suitable  commentary  on  this 
in  Henry  Ryecroft:  '*  Principles  always  become 
a  matter  of  vehement  discussion  when  practice 
is  at  an  ebb.'' 

As  a  scholar  Gissing  naturally  looked  with 
contempt  on  politics  and  political  parties,  but 
still,  from  at  least  one  of  his  books,  it  is  possible 
to  gain  an  outline  of  his  views  on  democracy. 

I  take  the  passage  from  Henry  Ryecroft, 
Section  XVI  of  "Spring"; 

I  am  no  friend  of  the  people.  As  a  force,  by  which 
the  tenor  of  the  time  is  conditioned,  they  inspire  me 
with  distrust,  with  fear  ;  as  a  visible  multitude,  they 
make  me  shrink  aloof,  and  often  move  me  to  abhor- 
rence. For  the  greater  part  of  my  life,  the  people 
signified  to  me  the  London  crowd,  and  no  phrase  of 
temperate  meaning  would  utter  my  thoughts  of  them 
under  that  aspect.  The  people  as  countryfolk  are 
little  known  to  me  ;  such  glimpses  as  I  have  had  of 
them  do  not  invite  to  nearer  acquaintance.  Every 
instinct  of  my  being  is  anti-democratic,  and  I  dread 
to  think  of  what  our  England  may  become  when 
Demos  rules  irresistibly. 

Right  or  wrong,  this  is  my  temper.  But  he  who 
should  argue  from  it  that  I  am  intolerant  of  all  persons 
belonging  to  a  lower  social  rank  than  my  own  would 
go  far  astray.  Nothing  is  more  rooted  in  my  mind 
than  the  vast  distinction  between  the  individual  and 
the  class.    Take  a  man  by  himself,  and  there  is  gener- 

269 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

ally  some  reason  to  be  found  in  him,  some  disposition 
for  good ;  mass  him  with  his  fellows  in  the  social 
organism,  and  ten  to  one  he  becomes  a  blatant  crea- 
ture, without  a  thought  of  his  own,  ready  for  any 
evil  to  which  contagion  prompts  him.  It  is  because 
nations  tend  to  stupidity  and  baseness  that  mankind 
moves  so  slowly  ;  it  is  because  individuals  have  a 
capacity  for  better  things  that  it  moves  at  all. 

In  my  youth,  looking  at  this  man  and  that,  I  mar- 
velled that  humanity  had  made  so  little  progress. 
Now,  looking  at  men  in  the  multitude,  I  marvel  that 
they  have  advanced  so  far. 

I  have  quoted  largely  from  Gissing  chiefly 
because  I  think  I  have  been  able  to  find  passages 
which  are  interesting  as  showing  Gissing's  char- 
acter even  when  detached  from  their  context. 
It  is  worth  noting  that  the  artist  in  him  enabled 
the  unfortunate  novelist  to  see  through  the 
democratic  spirit  of  modern  science,  and  to 
observe  what  a  check  it  is  likely  to  prove  on 
the  progress  of  art  and  culture.  Take  this 
extract  from  Henry  Ryecroft,  who  was  supposed 
to  be  writing,  appositely  enough,  under  the 
heading  of  ^'Winter": 

Somebody  has  been  making  a  speech,  reported  at 
a  couple  of  columns'  length  in  the  paper.  As  I  glance 
down  the  waste  of  print,  one  word  catches  my  eye 
again  and  again.  It's  all  about  "  science "  and 
therefore  doesn't  concern  me. 

I  wonder  whether  there  are  many  men  who  have 
the  same  feeling  with  regard  to  **  science  "  as  I  have  ? 

270 


GEORGE    GISSING 


It  is  something  more  than  a  prejudice  ;  often  it  takes 
the  form  of  a  dread,  almost  a  terror.  Even  those 
branches  of  science  which  are  concerned  with  things 
that  interest  me — ^which  deal  with  plants  and  animals 
and  the  heaven  of  stars — even  these  I  cannot  contem- 
plate without  uneasiness,  a  spiritual  disaffection  ;  new 
discoveries,  new  theories,  however  they  engage  my 
intelligence,  soon  weary  me,  and  in  some  way  depress. 
When  it  comes  to  other  kinds  of  science — the  sciences 
blatant  and  ubiquitous — the  science  by  which  men 
become  millionaires — I  am  possessed  with  an  angry 
hostility,  a  resentful  apprehension.  This  was  born  in 
me,  no  doubt ;  I  cannot  trace  it  to  circumstances  of 
my  life,  or  to  any  particular  moment  of  my  mental 
growth.  My  boyish  delight  in  Carlyle  doubtless 
nourished  the  temper,  but  did  not  Carlyle  so  delight 
me  because  of  what  was  already  in  my  mind  ?  I  re- 
member, as  a  lad,  looking  at  complicated  machinery 
with  a  shrinking  uneasiness  which,  of  course,  I  did 
not  understand ;  I  remember  the  sort  of  disturbed 
contemptuousness  with  which,  in  my  time  of  "  ex- 
aminations," I  dismissed  *'  science  papers."  It  is  in- 
telligible enough  to  me,  now,  that  unformed  fear ;  the 
ground  of  my  antipathy  has  grown  clear  enough.  I 
hate  and  fear  **  science,"  because  of  my  conviction 
that,  for  long  to  come  if  not  for  ever,  it  will  be  the 
remorseless  enemy  of  mankind.  I  see  it  destroying 
all  simplicity  and  gentleness  of  life,  all  the  beauty  of 
the  world ;  I  see  it  restoring  barbarism  under  a  mask 
of  civilisation  ;  I  see  it  darkening  men's  minds  and 
hardening  their  hearts  ;  I  see  it  bringing  a  time  of 
vast  conflicts,  which  will  pale  into  insignificance  **  the 
thousands  wars  of  old,"  and,  as  likely  as  not,  will 
whelm  all  the  laborious  advances  of  mankind  in 
blood-drenched  chaos. 

We   cannot   say   with   truth   that    Gissing's 

271 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

fortunes  really  improved  until  after  the  publi- 
cation of  New  Grub  Street  in  1891  ;  but  this 
must  not  be  taken  to  mean  that  thenceforward 
he  began  making  sums  such  as  are  now  generally 
ascribed  to  a  circulation-novelist  like  Mr.  Wells. 
In  the  later  nineties  Gissing  made  perhaps 
£300  a  year — a  poor  recompense  indeed  after 
years  of  misery,  semi-starvation,  and  ill-treat- 
ment. From  1900  until  he  died  in  December 
1903,  at  the  early  age  of  forty-six,  he  spent 
most  of  his  time  abroad.  His  death,  indeed, 
took  place  at  St.  Jean  de  Luz.  Before  he  died, 
however,  he  was  enabled  to  make  one  more 
journey  to  Italy.  On  this  occasion  he  pene- 
trated much  further  south  and  into  Sicily,  the 
record  of  the  voyage  being  preserved  in  one  of 
the  very  best  books  of  such  impressions  that 
we  have  in  the  English  language.  By  the  Ionian 
Sea.  Here  the  reader  will  find  so  many  ex- 
cellent descriptive  passages  that  it  is  difficult 
to  select  one  or  two  for  quotation,  but  I  cannot 
resist  giving  this  vignette  of  the  ploughman  on 
the  outskirts  of  Taranto  : 

Later  in  the  day  I  came  across  a  figure  scarcely  less 
impressive.  Beyond  the  new  quarter  of  the  town,  on 
the  ragged  edge  of  its  wide,  half-peopled  streets,  lies 
a  tract  of  olive  orchards  and  of  seed-land  ;  there,  alone 
amid  great  bare  fields,  a  countryman  was  ploughing. 

272 


GEORGE    GISSING 


The  wooden  plough,  as  regards  its  form,  might  have 
been  thousands  of  years  old  ;  it  was  drawn  by  a  little 
donkey,  and  traced  in  the  soil — the  generous  southern 
soil — the  merest  scratch  of  a  furrow.  I  could  not  but 
approach  the  man  and  exchange  words  with  him  ; 
his  rude  but  gentle  face,  his  gnarled  hands,  his  rough 
and  scanty  vesture,  moved  me  to  a  deep  respect,  and 
when  his  speech  fell  upon  my  ear,  it  was  as  though  I 
listened  to  one  of  the  ancestors  of  our  kind.  Stop- 
ping in  his  work,  he  answered  my  inquiries  with 
careful  civility  ;  certain  phrases  escaped  me,  but  on 
the  whole  he  made  himself  quite  intelligible,  and  was 
glad,  I  could  see,  when  my  words  proved  that  I  under- 
stood him.  I  drew  apart,  and  watched  him  again. 
Never  have  I  seen  man  so  utterly  patient,  so  primse- 
vally  deliberate.  The  donkey's  method  of  ploughing 
was  to  pull  for  one  minute,  and  then  rest  for  two  ;  it 
excited  in  the  ploughman  not  the  least  surprise  or 
resentment.  Though  he  held  a  long  stick  in  his 
hand,  he  never  made  use  of  it ;  at  each  stoppage  he 
contemplated  the  ass,  and  then  gave  utterance  to  a 
long  "  Ah-h-h  !  "  in  a  note  of  the  most  affectionate 
remonstrance.  They  were  not  driver  and  beast,  but 
comrades  in  labour.  It  reposed  the  mind  to  look 
upon  them. 

Again,  when  Gissing  caught  fever  at  Cotrone, 
he  was  attended  to  in  the  little  inn,  and  a  few 
of  the  scenes  he  described  are  laughable  enough  : 

Whilst  my  fever  was  high,  little  groups  of  people 
often  came  into  the  room,  to  stand  and  stare  at  me, 
exchanging,  in  a  low  voice,  remarks  which  they  sup- 
posed I  did  not  hear,  or,  hearing,  could  not  under- 
stand ;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  their  dialect  was  now 
intelligible  enough  to  me,  and  I  knew  that  they  dis- 

i8  273 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

cussed  my  chances  of  surviving.    Their  natures  were 
not  sanguine.     As  a  result,  doubtless,  of  the  unhealthy 
climate,  every  one  at  Cotrone  seemed  in  a  more  or 
less  gloomy  state  of  mind.    The  hostess  went  about 
uttering  ceaseless  moans  and  groans  ;    when  she  was 
in  my  room  I  heard  her  constantly  sighing,   '*  Ah, 
Signore !     Ah,   Cristo !  "    exclamations    which,    per- 
haps, had  some  reference  to  my  illness,  but  which  did 
not  cease  when  I  recovered.     Whether  she  had  any 
private  reason  for  depression  I  could  not  learn  ;    I 
fancy  not ;  it  was  only  the  whimpering  and  querulous 
habit   due   to   low   health.     A   female   servant,   who 
occasionally  brought  me  food  (I  found  that  she  also 
cooked  it),  bore  herself  in  much  the  same  way.    This 
domestic  was  the  most  primitive  figure  of  the  house- 
hold.    Picture  a  woman  of  middle-age,  wrapped  at 
all  times  in  dirty  rags  (not  to  be  called  clothing),  obese, 
grimy,    with   dishevelled   black   hair,   and   hands   so 
scarred,  so  deformed  by  labour  and  neglect,  as  to  be 
scarcely  human.     She  had  the  darkest  and  fiercest 
eyes  I  ever  saw.     Between  her  and  her  mistress  went 
on   an   unceasing   quarrel :     they   quarrelled   in   my 
room,  in  the  corridor,  and,  as  I  knew  by  their  shrill 
voices,  in  places  remote ;   yet  I  am  sure  they  did  not 
dislike  each  other,  and  probably  neither  of  them  ever 
thought  of  parting.     Unexpectedly,  one  evening,  this 
woman  entered,  stood  by  the  bedside,  and  began  to 
talk  with  such  fierce  energy,  with  such  flashing  of  her 
black  eyes,  and  such  distortion  of  her  features,  that 
I  could  only  suppose  that  she  was  attacking  me  for 
the  trouble  I  caused  her.     A  minute  or  two  passed 
before  I  could  even  hit  the  drift  of  her  furious  speech  ; 
she  was  always  the  most  difficult  of  the  natives  to 
understand,  and  in  rage  she  became  quite  unintelli- 
gible.    Little  by  little,  by  dint  of  questioning,  I  got 
at   what   she   meant.    There  had   been  guai,  worse 
than  usual ;  the  mistress  had  reviled  her  unendurably 

274 


GEORGE    GISSING 


for  some  fault  or  other,  and  was  it  not  hard  that  she 
should  be  used  like  this  after  having  tanto,  tanto 
lavorato  !  In  fact,  she  was  appealing  for  my  sym- 
pathy, not  abusing  me  at  all.  When  she  went  on  to 
say  that  she  was  alone  in  the  world,  that  all  her  kith 
and  kin  were  freddi  morti  (stone  dead),  a  pathos  in 
her  aspect  and  her  words  took  hold  upon  me  ;  it  was 
much  as  if  some  heavy-laden  beast  of  burden  had 
suddenly  found  tongue,  and  protested  in  the  rude 
beginnings  of  articulate  utterance  against  its  hard 
lot.  If  only  one  could  have  learnt,  in  intimate  detail, 
the  life  of  this  domestic  serf  !  How  interesting,  and 
how  sordidly  picturesque  against  the  background  of 
romantic  landscape,  of  scenic  history  !  I  looked  long 
into  her  sallow,  wrinkled  face,  trying  to  imagine  the 
thoughts  that  ruled  its  expression.  In  some  measure 
my  efforts  at  kindly  speech  succeeded,  and  her  "  Ah, 
Cristo  !  "  as  she  turned  to  go  away,  was  not  without 
a  touch  of  solace. 

Another  time  my  hostess  fell  foul  of  the  waiter, 
because  he  had  brought  me  goat's  milk  which  was 
very  sour.  There  ensued  the  most  comical  scene.  In 
an  access  of  fury  the  stout  woman  raged  and  stormed  ; 
the  waiter,  a  lank  young  fellow,  with  a  simple,  good- 
natured  face,  after  trying  to  explain  that  he  had 
committed  the  fault  by  inadvertence,  suddenly  raised 
his  hand  like  one  about  to  exhort  a  congregation,  and 
exclaimed  in  a  tone  of  injured  remonstrance,  "  Un 
po'  di  calma  !  Un  po'  di  calma  !  "  My  explosion  of 
laughter  at  this  inimitable  utterance  put  an  end  to  the 
strife.  The  youth  laughed  with  me  ;  his  mistress 
bustled  him  out  of  the  room,  and  then  began  to  in- 
form me  that  he  was  weak  in  his  head.  Ah  !  she 
exclaimed,  her  life  with  these  people  !  what  it  cost 
her  to  keep  them  in  anything  like  order  !  When  she 
retired,  I  heard  her  expectorating  violently  in  the  cor- 
ridor ;  a  habit  with  every  inmate  of  this  genial  hostelry. 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

It  is  without  hesitation  then  that  I  call 
Gissing  an  artist,  and  I  have  not  thought  it 
necessary  or  even  desirable  to  deal  with  any 
one  of  his  books  in  full  to  prove  the  statement. 
The  quotations  I  have  given  will,  I  think, 
indicate  his  soundness  of  scholarship,  and  the 
remarkable  effect  it  had  on  his  style.  We  do 
not  see  in  him,  as  we  do  in  so  many  other 
modern  novelists,  any  signs  of  that  laborious- 
ness  which  distinguishes  the  self-made  artist 
from  the  real  artist.  A  long  classical  training, 
undertaken  and  carried  through  out  of  pure 
love  for  the  great  works  of  antiquity,  enabled 
Gissing  at  once  to  seize  upon  the  right  word, 
the  right  phrase ;  enabled  him  likewise  to 
adjust  the  part  to  the  whole  and  to  make  every 
one  of  his  books  a  complete  unity.  As  a  man 
he  himself  was  not  discordant ;  like  Horace,  an 
author  whom  he  loved,  he  was  acquainted  to 
a  nicety  with  his  own  limits,  and,  like  Horace 
again,  he  seldom  indeed  went  beyond  them. 
He  knew  his  characters,  he  knew  his  subject, 
and  he  weaved  just  a  sufficient  amount  of  plot 
to  keep  the  reader  interested  without  entangling 
him  in  a  labyrinth.  He  deals  with  the  seamiest 
side  of  realism  without  being  too  realistic.  The 
worst  argument  that  can  be  brought  against 

276 


GEORGE    GISSING 


his  books  is  that  his  subjects  are  depressing, 
and  depressing  they  undoubtedly  are  ;  but  his 
books  are  art  for  all  that,  and  as  such  they 
help  us  to  live.  They  are  only  depressing  in 
the  sense  in  which  we  speak  of  the  Book  of 
Job  as  depressing,  or  Dante,  or  Macbeth,  and 
to  no  greater  extent  than  any  of  these.  As  for 
the  numerous  beautiful  sketches,  vignettes,  or 
descriptions  scattered  through  his  novels  they 
may  be  sufficiently  judged  perhaps  from  the 
quotations  I  have  already  given  ;  but  I  feel 
that,  in  justice  to  Gissing,  I  ought  to  give  one 
more.    Take  the  following  from  Thyrza  : 

Do  you  know  that  music  of  the  obscure  ways,  to 
which  children  dance  ?  Not  if  you  have  only  heard  it 
ground  to  your  ears'  affliction  beneath  your  windows 
in  the  square.  To  hear  it  aright  you  must  stand  in 
the  darkness  of  such  a  by-street  as  this,  and  for  the 
moment  be  at  one  with  those  who  dwell  around,  in 
the  blear-eyed  houses,  in  the  dim  burrows  of  poverty, 
in  the  unmapped  haunts  of  the  semi-human.  Then 
you  will  know  the  significance  of  that  vulgar  clanging 
of  melody  ;  a  pathos  of  which  you  did  not  dream  will 
touch  you,  and  therein  the  secret  of  hidden  London 
will  be  half -revealed.  The  life  of  men  who  toil  with- 
out hope,  yet  with  the  hunger  of  an  unshaped  desire ; 
of  women  in  whom  the  sweetness  of  their  sex  is 
perishing  under  labour  and  misery  ;  the  laugh,  the 
song  of  the  girl  who  strives  to  enjoy  her  year  or  two 
of  youthful  vigour,  knowing  the  darkness  of  the  years 
to  come  ;  the  careless  defiance  of  the  youth  who  feels 

277 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

his  blood  and  revolts  against  the  lot  which  would 
tame  it ;  all  that  is  purely  human  in  these  darkened 
multitudes  speaks  to  you  as  you  listen.  It  is  the 
half-conscious  striving  of  a  nature  which  knows  not 
what  it  would  attain,  which  deforms  a  true  thought 
by  gross  expression,  which  clutches  at  the  beautiful 
and  soils  it  with  foul  hands.  The  children  were  dirty 
and  ragged,  several  of  them  bare-footed,  nearly  all 
bare-headed,  but  they  danced  with  noisy  merriment. 
One  there  was,  a  little  girl,  on  crutches  ;  incapable  of 
taking  a  partner,  she  stumped  round  and  round, 
circling  upon  the  pavement,  till  giddiness  came  upon 
her  and  she  had  to  fall  back  and  lean  against  the  wall, 
laughing  aloud  at  her  weakness.  Gilbert  stepped  up 
to  her,  and  put  a  penny  into  her  hand ;  then,  before 
she  had  recovered  from  her  surprise,  passed  onwards. 

It  is  in  passages  like  these  where  Gissing 
surpasses  even  Crackanthorpe,  and  is  worthy 
to  rank  with  Guy  de  Maupassant.  Once  more, 
before  closing  this  all  too  short  survey  of 
Gissing,  let  me  insist  upon  that  characteristic 
which  I  have  already  ascribed  to  him  as  an 
honour — ^he  never  sought  to  degrade  his  art  for 
the  sake  of  money.  Confronted  with  the  two 
publics,  he  chose  the  smaller ;  and  for  doing 
this  he  will  one  day  meet  with  his  reward. 


278 


CHAPTER    IX 

W.  B.  YEATS — GEORGE  MOORE — THE  CELTIC 
REVIVAL— FIONA  MACLEOD — ''  A.  E.'' — JOHN 
DAVIDSON  —  FRANCIS  THOMPSON  —  W.  L. 
COURTNEY — LAURENCE  BINYON — ST.  JOHN 
HANKIN — RICHARD  LE  GALLIENNE — R.  B. 
CUNNINGHAME   GRAHAM. 

As  I  have  attempted  in  this  volume  to  deal 
with  the  dynamic  movement  in  English  litera- 
ture during  the  last  generation,  I  have  not 
thought  it  necessary  to  treat  of  men  like  William 
Watson,  Alfred  Austin,  or  Rudyard  Kipling. 
Mr.  Austin  is  the  direct  poetical  descendant  of 
Tennyson,  mixed  here  and  there  with  a  spice 
of  Browning,  and  his  work  continues  in  their 
tradition.  Mr.  Watson  is  a  poet  of  consider- 
able merit,  but  his  work  as  a  whole  does  not 
swerve  sufficiently  far  from  the  orthodox  to 
merit  either  considerable  praise  or  considerable 
blame.  Mr.  Kipling  is,  it  is  true,  of  much 
more  importance  than  either,  but  he  will,  I 
think,  be  remembered  in  English  literature  as  a 

279 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

short-story  writer  rather  than  as  a  poet.  De- 
spite the  verve  and  swing  of  his  verse,  particu- 
larly as  exhibited  in  Barrack  Room  Ballads,  it 
will  not,  I  think,  last  so  long  as  his  prose.  To 
use  a  convenient  German  word,  it  is  zeitge- 
mass ;  that  is  to  say,  adapted  to,  or  harmonising 
with,  one  particular  period  of  time.  Patriotism 
alone  is  not  sufficient  excuse  for  a  poem,  and 
unfortunately  most  of  Mr.  Kipling's  poetical 
work  is  not  distinguished  by  the  imagination 
we  can  find  in  men  like  Ernest  Dowson, 
Arthur  Symons,  or  John  Davidson.  His  longer 
novels,  too,  have  a  tendency  to  lag  here  and 
there  ;  but  as  a  short-story  writer  we  need 
have  no  hesitation  in  comparing  him  with  the 
best  Russian  or  French  masters. 

In  Mr.  William  Butler  Yeats,  however,  we 
have  a  man  of  a  very  different  stamp  of  mind. 
Mr.  Yeats  was  born  in  Dublin  in  1865.  It  was, 
I  think,  Oscar  Wilde  who  was  one  of  the  first 
to  appreciate  his  merits  as  a  poet  and  to  invite 
him  to  London.  There  were  certain  literary 
circles  at  that  time  where  a  vague  interest  was 
exhibited  in  what  has  come  to  be  known  as  the 
Celtic  movement.  It  was  a  somewhat  sluggish 
and  indeed  almost  stagnant  movement,  with  no 
particular  aim  in  view,  but  when  Mr.  Yeats  came 

280 


W.    B.   YEATS 


to  London  in  1888  and  published  his  first  volume 
of  poems,  The  Wanderings  of  Oisin,  in  1889,  it 
became  more  active.  Mr.  Yeats  has  since  re- 
written a  great  part  of  this  early  volume,  but 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  its  publication 
opened  up  quite  a  new  world  to  those  English 
poets  and  men  of  letters  who  took  any  interest 
in  such  things.  Gaelic  mythology  and  the 
shadowy  chieftains  who  move  vaguely  through 
the  records  of  ancient  Irish  history  had  long 
been  neglected,  and  in  England  their  study  had 
been  confined  to  a  few  professors.  Mr.  Yeats 
showed  how  Gaelic  mythology  could  be  turned 
to  advantage  by  modern  poetry,  and  his  en- 
thusiasm, which  was  shared  by  countrymen 
and  countrywomen  of  his  such  as  George  Moore, 
Dr.  Douglas  Hyde,  and  Lady  Gregory,  finally 
resulted  in  the  founding  of  the  Irish  Literary 
Theatre,  an  institution  which  provided  an  out- 
let for  plays  by  Mr.  Yeats  himself  as  well  as 
others  by  writers  like  George  Moore  and  J.  M. 
Synge. 

In  1892  Mr.  Yeats  published  his  Countess 
Cathleen  and  other  verses.  A  volume  of 
sketches  entitled  The  Celtic  Twilight  followed  in 
1893,  and  The  Secret  Rose,  containing  the 
stories  of  Hanrahan  the  Red,  appeared  in  1897. 

281 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

In  1895  Mr.  Yeats  issued  a  revised  edition  of 
his  poems,  which  he  followed  up  in  1899  with  a 
remarkable  volume  of  lyrics  entitled  The  Wind 
among  the  Reeds.  From  the  beginning  of  the 
present  century  he  has  been  closely  connected 
with  the  Irish  Literary  Theatre,  for  which  he 
has  written  several  plays.  One  of  his  dramas, 
Diarmuid  and  Grania,  written  in  collaboration 
with  Mr.  George  Moore,  was  produced  in 
London  by  Mr.  F.  R.  Benson  in  1901,  and  we 
have  since  had  his  collected  essays,  his  Ideas 
of  Good  and  Evil,  and  one  or  two  other  books 
of  minor  importance.  Although  Mr.  Yeats  is 
still  a  young  man,  therefore,  he  has  given  us 
a  sufficient  amount  of  work  to  enable  us 
to  estimate  his  place  among  the  writers  of  the 
present  day. 

It  must  be  said  that  Mr.  Yeats^s  standing  in 
modern  English  literature  is  high,  but  not  per- 
haps for  the  reasons  usually  supposed.  Mr. 
Yeats  has  revived  our  interest  in  Celtic  mytho- 
logy, but  he  has  not,  as  he  evidently  thought, 
found  in  it  his  own  inspiration.  If  a  political 
parallel  may  be  allowed  in  this  connection,  I 
may  be  permitted  to  point  out  that  a  cry  like 
"  back  to  the  land ''  or  ''  back  to  feudalism '' 
brings    to    our    minds    an    aim    which    it    is 

282 


W.    B.   YEATS 


no  longer  possible  to  carry  out  in  view  of  the 
great  industrial  progress  attained  by  every 
country  throughout  the  world  in  the  course 
of  the  last  hundred  years.  A  system  of  land 
reform  is  possible,  and  a  modified  type  of 
feudalism  is  also  a  practicable  suggestion, 
but  some  modifications  in  the  old  systems 
are  essential.  Similarly,  although  Mr.  Yeats 
and  other  writers  have  endeavoured  to  seek 
their  inspiration  in  Celtic  mythology,  they 
could  not  shake  off  the  influence  exercised 
upon  them  not  only  by  the  English  literature 
with  which  they  became  familiar,  but  also  by 
the  entire  literary  atmosphere  of  the  period, 
whether  in  Ireland  or  in  England.  For  us 
it  is  as  impossible  at  the  present  day  to  go 
back  to  Celtic  mythology  with  undiluted  minds 
as  it  is  to  endeavour  to  write  poems  on  a 
basis  of  Roman  or  Greek  mythology,  as  if  we 
had  been  born  in  the  first  or  second  century  of 
our  era.  Between  Mr.  Yeats  and  Celtic  mytho- 
logy there  lies  the  whole  range  of  English 
literature,  with  which  he  is  obviously  familiar. 
If  he  had  been  caught  young,  so  to  speak,  by 
some  modern  druid  and  brought  up  all  his 
life  on  the  poems  of  the  ancient  bards,  he  might 
possibly  have  been  able  to  write  something 

283 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

inspired  by  purely  Celtic  feelings.  Mr.  Yeats 
has  found  numerous  characters  in  ancient 
Gaelic  literature,  numerous  poetical  suggestions, 
and  no  doubt  the  interpretation  of  innumerable 
moods  ;  but  he  did  not  go  to  this  mythology 
with  what  I  should  be  inclined  to  call  an  un- 
diluted mind.  He  sought  his  characters  in  old 
Gaelic  literature,  but  his  inspiration  came  from 
William  Blake. 

Mr.  Yeats's  natural  tendencies  were  towards 
the  mystical,  one  might  even  say  towards  the 
unreal.  These,  of  course,  are  entitled  to  be 
called  poetic  qualities,  and  they  are  in  par- 
ticular the  characteristics  of  primitive  peoples. 
They  are  not  qualities  peculiar  to  ancient 
Gaelic  poetry  ;  they  are  qualities  common  to 
the  poetry  of  every  nation.  In  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances I  should  wish  to  lay  no  particular 
stress  on  this  fact,  and  I  do  so  here  merely 
because  the  modern  Irish  school  has  led  many 
people  to  believe  that  mysticism,  symbolism, 
the  vague,  and  the  unreal  are  essential  qualities 
in  Gaelic  poetry  and  peculiar  to  it  alone.  In 
his  first  essay,  in  The  Ideas  of  Good  and  Evil, 
Mr.  Yeats  is  frank  enough  to  tell  us  that  his 
poetical  choice  was  deliberate  :  ''I  wanted  to 
write  popular  poetry  like  those  Irish  poets,  for 

284 


W.    B.   YEATS 


I  believed  that  all  good  literatures  were  popular, 
and  even  cherished  the  fancy  that  the  Adelphi 
melodramas,  which  I  had  never  seen,  might 
be  good  literature,  and  I  hated  what  I  called 
*  the  coteries.'  I  thought  that  one  must  write 
without  care,  for  that  was  of  '  the  coteries,' 
but  with  a  gusty  energy  that  would  put  all 
straight  if  it  came  out  of  the  right  heart.  .  ,  . 
From  that  day  to  this  I  have  been  busy  among 
the  verses  and  stories  that  the  people  make  for 
themselves,  but  I  had  been  busy  a  very  little 
while  before  I  knew  that  what  we  call  popular 
poetry  never  came  from  the  people  at  all." 

Mr.  Yeats,  of  course,  was  not  alone  in 
imagining  that  good  poetry  could  spring  from 
the  people,  and  he  was  not  the  first  to  admit  his 
error.  Nietzsche  recounts  a  precisely  similar 
experience :  in  his  late  teens  and  even  in  his 
early  twenties  he  was  under  the  impression 
that  a  noble  poem  could  arise  from  among  the 
masses,  and  he  thought  he  discerned  in  the 
poems  ascribed  to  Homer  some  grounds  for 
holding  this  belief — a  belief  which,  as  the  result 
of  the  rather  uninspired  investigations  of  Wolf 
and  his  followers,  had  become  very  prevalent 
in  Germany  during  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.     A  few   years  later,   however, 

285 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

when  Nietzsche  began  to  investigate  the  matter 
on  his  own  account,  he  saw  clearly  enough 
that  no  amount  of  combination  on  the  part  of 
a  body  of  uninspired  people  could  equal  the 
efforts  of  one  real  poet.  In  the  strict  sense  of 
the  words,  the  expression  '*  popular  poetry  "  is 
a  contradiction  in  terms.  Masters  of  verse  like 
Mr.  Yeats  may  write  in  ballad  form  if  they 
choose  ;  the  result  will  probably  be  poetry, 
but  it  will  not  necessarily  be  popular.  The  fol- 
lowing specimen  of  Mr.  Yeats's  work  from  The 
Wind  among  the  Reeds  is,  I  think,  sufficiently 
ballad-like  to  please  the  crowd  and  sufficiently 
poetical  to  please  the  critic  : 

THE  SONG  OF  WANDERING  AENGUS 

I  went  out  to  the  hazel  wood. 
Because  a  fire  was  in  my  head. 
And  cut  and  pulled  a  hazel  wand. 
And  hooked  a  berry  to  a  thread  ; 
And  when  white  moths  were  on  the  wing. 
And  moth-like  stars  were  flickering  out, 
I  dropped  the  berry  in  a  stream 
And  caught  a  little  silver  trout. 

When  I  had  laid  it  on  the  floor 
I  went  to  blow  the  fire  a-flame. 
But  something  rustled  on  the  floor. 
And  some  one  called  me  by  my  name  ; 
It  had  become  a  glimmering  girl 
With  apple  blossom  in  her  hair 
Who  called  me  by  my  name  and  ran 
And  faded  through  the  brightening  air. 

286 


W.    B.   YEATS 


Though  I  am  old  with  wandering 
Through  hollow  lands  and  hilly  lands, 
I  will  find  out  where  she  has  gone. 
And  kiss  her  lips  and  take  her  hands  ; 
And  walk  among  long  dappled  grass. 
And  pluck  till  time  and  times  are  done, 
The  silver  apples  of  the  moon. 
The  golden  apples  of  the  sun. 

This  is,  I  think,  a  very  good  specimen  of  Mr. 
Yeats's  work — it  exhibits  him,  that  is  to  say, 
as  a  compound  of  Gaelic  bard  and  William 
Blake.  Another  side  of  the  poet,  however, 
and  one  in  which  Blake's  influence  is  less 
evident,  may  be  found  even  more  interesting. 
Many  of  us  who  have  read  through  The  Rose 
and  come  across  the  beautiful  lyric  When 
you  are  old,  will  doubtless  be  reminded  of 
Mr.  Arthur  Symons  : 

When  you  are  old  and  gray  and  full  of  sleep. 
And  nodding  by  the  fire,  take  down  this  book. 
And  slowly  read,  and  dream  of  the  soft  look 
Your  eyes  had  once,  and  of  their  shadows  deep  ; 

How  many  loved  your  moments  of  glad  grace. 
And  loved  your  beauty  with  love  false  or  true  ; 
But  one  man  loved  the  pilgrim  soul  in  you. 
And  loved  the  sorrows  of  your  changing  face. 

And  bending  down  beside  the  glowing  bars 
Murmur,  a  little  sad,  From  us  fled  Love  ; 
He  paced  upon  the  mountains  far  above. 
And  hid  his  face  amid  a  crowd  of  stars. 

If  we  go  back  to  The  Wind  among  the  Reeds 

287 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

again,  we  shall  find  a  lyric  entitled  The  Heart 
of  the  Woman,  which  possesses  quite  a  peculiar 
pathos.  It  may  remind  others,  as  it  reminded 
me,  of  the  Provencal  poets,  or  their  Spanish 
equivalents  the  Trovadores.  Mr.  Yeats  has 
shed  what  Pater  would  call  a  gem-like  flame 
upon  a  mood,  though  the  same  thought,  if  ex- 
pressed by  a  man  like  Gongora,  would  have 
been  stiffened,  polished,  and  ornamented  beyond 
recognition. 

Oh,  what  to  me  the  little  room 

That  was  brimmed  up  with  prayer  and  rest ; 

He  bade  me  out  into  the  gloom. 

And  my  breast  lies  upon  his  breast. 

Oh,  what  to  me  my  mother's  care. 
The  house  where  I  was  safe  and  warm  ; 
The  shadowy  blossom  in  my  hair 
Will  hide  us  from  the  bitter  storm. 

Oh  hiding  hair  and  dewy  eyes, 
I  am  no  more  with  life  and  death. 
My  heart  upon  his  warm  heart  lies. 
My  breath  is  mixed  into  his  breath. 

As  a  playwright,  Mr.  Yeats,  I  confess,  does 
not  appeal  to  me.  The  stage  does  not  seem 
to  me  the  place  for  Mr.  Shaw's  sociological 
problems,  but  it  seems  to  me  even  less  the 
place  for  mysticism  and  symbolism,  and  these 
are  qualities  which  are  to  be  found  in  all  Mr. 
Yeats's  dramas.    There  are,  of  course,  many 

288 


W.    B.   YEATS 


fine  passages  and  fine  single  lines  to  be  met 
with  here  and  there,  and  they  are  not  merely 
stuck  on  for  the  sake  of  effect  :  when  they 
come  into  our  memory  after  we  have  read  the 
play  they  bring  with  them  their  proper  context. 
The  Wanderings  of  Oisin,  too,  is  rich  in  noble 
phraseology.  Let  me  take  a  passage  from  Book 
II — not  that  it  is  the  best,  but  because  it  is 
short : 

But  the  love-dew  dims  our  eyes  till  the  day 
When  God  shall  come  from  the  sea  with  a  sigh 
And  bid  the  stars  drop  down  from  the  sky. 
And  the  moon  like  a  pale  rose  wither  away. 

And  of  course  we  cannot  possibly  overlook 
a  lyric  which  will  easily  bear  comparison  with 
anything  that  Dowson  or  Symons  has  given 
us — The  Lake  Isle  of  Innisfree : 

I  will  arise  and  go  now,  and  go  to  Innisfree, 
And  a  small  cabin  build  there,  of  clay  and  wattles  made  ; 
Nine  bean  rows  will  I  have  there,  a  hive  for  the  honey  bee. 
And  live  alone  in  the  bee-loud  glade. 

And  I  shall  have  some  peace  there,  for  peace  comes  dropping 

slow. 
Dropping  from  the  veils  of  the  morning  to  where  the  cricket 

sings  ; 
There  midnight's  all  a  glimmer,  and  noon  a  purple  glow. 
And  evening  full  of  the  linnet's  wings. 

I  will  arise  and  go  now,  for  always  night  and  day 
I  hear  lake  water  lapping  with  low  sounds  by  the  shore  ; 
While  I  stand  on  the  roadway,  or  on  the  pavements  gray, 
I  hear  it  in  the  deep  heart's  core. 

19  289 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

The  most  important  of  Mr.  Yeats*s  associates 
was,  of  course,  Mr.  George  Moore.  If  we  want 
to  know  all  about  Mr.  Moore's  career,  and 
incidentally  about  the  career  of  most  of  the 
men  and  women  with  whom  he  has  been 
associated,  we  have  only  to  turn  to  the  first 
book  of  his  new  trilogy,  Ave.  He  begins  it  by 
telling  us  how  in  1894  he  and  Edward  Martyn 
were  living  in  the  Temple,  and  how  Martyn 
one  night  suddenly  made  what  was,  to  Moore, 
the  astounding  proposal  that  they  should  write 
plays  in  Irish  ;  and  this  appears  to  have  been 
the  first  occasion  when  Moore  was  really  made 
aware  of  the  fact  that  there  was  a  movement 
springing  up  in  Ireland  for  the  attempted 
resuscitation  of  Gaelic  literature.  Not  long 
after — about  1899 — Moore  became  more  inti- 
mately associated  with  Yeats,  and  they  were 
both  among  the  founders  of  the  Irish  Literary 
Theatre. 

I  do  not  propose  here  to  discuss  in  detail 
Mr.  Moore's  latest  autobiography,  for  it  has 
been  published  too  recently  to  be  germane  to 
the  purpose  of  this  book.  I  cannot  help  saying, 
however,  that  it  sets  a  decidedly  new  fashion  in 
writing  of  this  kind.  It  is  pure  Boswell,  without 
Bosweirs  scholastic  moments  of  eighteenth-cen- 
290 


GEORGE    MOORE 


tury  pseudo-classical  stiffness  and  pedantry. 
Mr.  Moore  chatters  gaily  not  only  about  himself, 
but  about  all  his  friends.  No  personality  he 
ever  met  is  too  sacred  to  be  dragged  into  his 
pages,  and  to  have  his  weaknesses  and  good 
points,  if  any,  artlessly  set  forth.  I  have  said 
that  the  book  is  pure  Boswell,  and  I  may  add 
that  it  is  purely  Irish  in  the  best  sense  of  the 
word.  Mr.  Moore  takes  us  all  into  his  con- 
fidence, shows  his  warm-heartedness  and  entire 
lack  of  affectation,  digs  us  in  the  ribs,  pats  us  on 
the  back,  laughs  at  himself,  his  friends,  and  his 
readers,  and  chuckles — ^we  can  hear  him  between 
the  lines  as  he  writes — when  he  has  anything 
particularly  wicked  to  say.  I  wish  to  quote  one 
or  two  passages  as  illustrating  Mr.  Moore^s  style. 
There  is  quite  a  good  one  about  GilFs  beard. 
Gill's  beard,  it  seems,  was  the  origin  of  Gill : 

At  the  end  of  a  long  convalescence,  Gill  had  entered 
a  barber's  shop,  his  beard  neglected,  growing  in 
patches,  thicker  on  one  side  of  his  face  than  on  the 
other.  He  fell  wearily  into  a  chair,  murmuring,  **  La 
barbe,"  and  exhausted  by  illness  and  the  heat  of  the 
saloon,  he  did  not  notice  for  some  time  that  no  one 
had  come  to  attend  to  him.  The  silence  at  last  awoke 
him  out  of  the  lethargy  or  light  doze  into  which  he 
had  slipped,  and  looking  round  it  seemed  to  him  that 
his  dream  had  come  true  ;  that  the  barber  had  gone  : 
that  he  was  alone,  for  some  reason  unaccountable,  in 


291 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

the  shop.  A  little  alarmed  he  turned  in  his  chair, 
and  for  a  moment  could  find  nobody.  The  barber  had 
retreated  to  the  steps  leading  to  the  ladies'  saloon, 
whence  he  could  study  his  customer  intently,  as  a 
painter  might  a  picture.  As  Gill  was  about  to  speak 
the  barber  struck  his  brow,  saying,  "  Style  Henri 
Quatre,"  and  drew  his  scissors  from  the  pocket  of 
his  apron.  Gill  does  not  remember  experiencing  any 
particular  emotion  while  his  beard  was  being  trimmed. 
It  was  not  until  the  barber  gave  him  the  glass  that 
he  felt  the  sudden  transformation — felt  rather  than 
saw,  for  the  transformation  effected  in  his  face  was 
little  compared  with  that  which  had  happened  in  his 
soul.  In  the  beginning  was  the  beard,  and  the  beard 
was  with  God,  Who  in  this  case  happened  to  be  a 
barber ;  and  glory  be  to  the  Lord  and  to  His  shears 
that  a  statesman  of  the  Renaissance  walked  that  day 
up  the  Champs  Elysees,  his  thoughts  turning — and  we 
think  not  unnaturally — towards  Machiavelli. 

Of  course,  there  are  also  reports  of  various 
conversations  with  Yeats  regarding  Irish  plays, 
some  of  which  apparently  must  have  reached 
maturity  through  a  curious  process.  Yeats 
asks  Moore  to  write  a  play  in  French.  .  .  . 
*'  Lady  Gregory  will  translate  your  text  into 
English.  Taidgh  O'Donoghue  will  translate 
the  English  text  into  Irish,  and  Lady  Gregory 
will  translate  the  Irish  text  back  again  into 
English.''  And  Moore,  merely  remarking  that 
he  relies  upon  Yeats  to  ''  put  style  upon  it  " 
after  all  this,  actually  sets  about  the  task. 

292 


GEORGE    MOORE 


Better  than  this,  however,  is  the  little  vig- 
nette about  the  dinner  when  Yeats  made  a 
speech  : 

My  eyes  went  to  Yeats,  who  sat,  his  head  drooping 
on  his  shirt-front,  Hke  a  crane,  uncertain  whether  he 
should  fold  himself  up  for  the  night,  and  I  wondered 
what  was  the  beautiful  eloquence  that  was  germinat- 
ing in  his  mind.  He  would  speak  to  us  about  the  gods, 
of  course,  and  about  Time  and  Fate  and  the  gods 
being  at  war  ;  and  the  moment  seemed  so  long  that 
I  grew  irritated  with  Gill  for  not  calling  upon  him  at 
once  for  a  speech. 

At  length  this  happened,  and  Yeats  rose,  and  a 
beautiful  commanding  figure  he  seemed  at  the  end 
of  the  table,  pale  and  in  profile,  with  long  nervous 
hands  and  a  voice  resonant  and  clear  as  a  silver 
trumpet.  He  drew  himself  up  and  spoke  against 
Trinity  College,  saying  that  it  had  always  taught  the 
ideas  of  the  stranger,  and  the  sons  of  the  stranger,  and 
the  literature  of  the  stranger,  and  that  was  why 
Ireland  had  never  listened  and  Trinity  College  had 
been  a  sterile  influence.  The  influences  that  had  moved 
Ireland  deeply  were  the  old  influences  that  had  come 
down  from  generation  to  generation,  handed  on 
by  the  story-tellers  that  collected  in  the  evenings 
round  the  fire,  creating  for  learned  ^nd  unlearned  a 
communion  of  heroes.  But  my  memory  fails  me  ;  I 
am  disfiguring  and  blotting  the  beautiful  thoughts 
that  I  heard  that  night  clothed  in  lovely  language. 
He  spoke  of  Cherubim  and  Seraphim,  and  the  hier- 
archies and  the  clouds  of  angels  that  the  Church  had 
set  against  the  ancient  culture,  and  then  he  told  us 
that  gods  had  been  brought  vainly  from  Rome  and 
Greece  and  Judaea.  In  the  imaginations  of  the 
people  only  the  heroes  had  survived,  and  from  the 

2Q3 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

places  where  they  had  walked  their  shadows  fell  often 
across  the  doorways  ;  and  then  there  was  something 
wonderfully  beautiful  about  the  blue  ragged  moun- 
tains and  the  mystery  that  lay  behind  them,  ragged 
mountains  flowing  southward.  But  that  speech  has 
gone  for  ever.  I  have  searched  the  newspapers,  but 
the  journalist's  report  is  feebler  even  than  my  partial 
memory.  It  seemed  to  me  that  while  Yeats  spoke  I 
was  lifted  up  and  floated  in  mid-air.  .  .  .  But  I  will 
no  longer  attempt  the  impossible ;  suffice  it  to  say 
that  I  remember  Yeats  sinking  back  like  an  ancient 
oracle  exhausted  by  prophesying. 

Distinctly  humorous,  in  its  own  way,  is  the 
reference  to  a  pamphlet  about  *'  Arabi  Pasha, 
an  Egyptian  rebel.'*  This  reminds  me  of  the 
Roman  history  beginning  with  the  words  **  Gaul 
was  conquered  by  a  man  of  the  name  of  Julius 
Caesar." 

As  a  novelist  Mr.  Moore  has  professed  him- 
self to  be  a  realist  and  particularly  a  follower 
of  Zola.  His  long  residence  in  Paris  led  him 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  English  language 
was  no  longer  an  apt  vehicle  for  literary  pur- 
poses, but  although  Mr.  Moore  writes  in  Eng- 
lish his  peculiar  rippling,  garrulous  style  has 
remained  Celtic.  It  may  seem  curious  that  a 
professed  realist  should  in  later  years  have 
taken  up  an  idealistic  movement  such  as  the 
Celtic  revival  is,  and  one  can  only  suppose  that 
Mr.  Moore  has  long  suffered  from  home-sick- 

294 


GEORGE  MOORE 


ness,  which  may  be  intellectual  as  well  as 
physical,  or  rather  which  may  affect  the  head 
as  well  as  the  heart.  A  visit  to  Ireland  after 
a  long  residence  abroad,  and  Mr.  Moore  turned 
completely  round.  His  novels  are  so  well 
known  that  I  need  do  no  more  than  refer  to 
the  three  most  important — the  conventual 
Evelyn  Innes  and  its  sequel  Sister  Teresa,  books 
which  are  uncommon  on  account  of  their  sub- 
ject, setting,  and  atmosphere,  but  which  have 
sold  very  well  even  in  Protestant  England. 
And  then  there  is  of  course  Esther  Waters — a 
novel  with  a  purpose,  if  you  can  imagine  Mr. 
Moore  writing  such  a  thing.  It  is  a  book 
which  sets  forth  the  evils  of  gambling  very 
powerfully  and  ends  in  a  manner  very  nearly 
worthy  of  Gissing ;  but  of  course  between 
the  naive  Celt  and  the  rather  stern  Wakefield 
scholar  we  cannot  make  any  other  comparison. 
The  Bending  of  the  Bough,  written  for  the  Irish 
Literary  Theatre,  may  be  passed  over  both 
for  the  sake  of  the  reader's  patience  and  Mr. 
Moore's  reputation  ;  but  his  book  of  art  criti- 
cisms entitled  Modern  Painting  (1898)  is  one 
of  the  best  volumes  he  ever  published.  It 
is  very  often  wrong-headed — Mr.  Moore's 
opinion  of  Sargent,  for  example,  can  hardly  be 

29$ 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

called  modern.  Many  of  his  criticisms,  how- 
ever, are  delightful,  and  here  and  there  is  a 
sentence  which  might  be  called  artistically 
inspired.  One  of  the  best  essays  in  it  is  that 
entitled  Royalty  in  Art,  for  Mr.  Moore  deals 
with  the  influence  of  the  British  Royal  Family 
on  English  artistic  ideals.  He  mentions  casu- 
ally the  support  given  to  art  by  Julius  II, 
Philip  IV,  Frederick  the  Great,  and  Charles  II, 
and  then  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  the  Victorian 
Exhibition.  In  the  late  nineties  it  needed  no 
little  courage  to  publish  the  extract  which 
follows,  though  we  must  not  allow  our  admira- 
tion for  Mr.  Moore's  nerve  to  make  us  overlook 
the  fact  that  his  ideas  are  exceedingly  well 
expressed : 

Yes,  truly  the  Victorian  Exhibition  is  an  object- 
lesson  in  royalty.  If  all  other  records  were  destroyed, 
the  historian,  five  hundred  years  hence,  could  recon- 
stitute the  psychological  characteristics,  the  mentality 
of  the  present  reigning  family  from  the  pictures  on 
exhibition  there.  For  in  the  art  that  it  has  chosen 
to  patronise  (a  more  united  family  on  the  subject  of 
art  it  would  be  hard  to  imagine — nowhere  can  we 
detect  the  slightest  difference  of  opinion),  the  Queen, 
her  spouse,  and  her  children  appear  to  be  singularly 
bourgeois ;  a  staid  German  family  congenially  and 
stupidly  commonplace,  accepting  a  little  too  seriously 
its  mission  of  crowns  and  sceptres,  and  accomplishing 
its  duties,  grown  out  of  date,  somewhat  witlessly,  but 

296 


GEORGE    MOORE 


with  heavy  dignity  and  forbearance.  Waiving  all 
racial  characteristics,  the  German  bourgeois  family 
mind  appears  plainly  enough  in  all  these  family 
groups  ;  no  other  mind  could  have  permitted  the 
perpetration  of  so  much  stolid  family  placidity,  of  so 
much  "  frauism/*  "  Exhibit  us  in  our  family  circle, 
in  our  coronation  robes,  in  our  wedding  dresses,  let 
the  likeness  be  correct  and  the  colours  bright — we 
leave  the  rest  to  you."  Such  seems  to  have  been  the 
royal  artistic  edict  issued  in  the  beginning  of  the 
present  reign.  In  no  instance  has  the  choice  fallen 
on  a  painter  of  talent ;  but  the  middling  from  every 
country  in  Europe  seems  to  have  found  a  ready  wel- 
come at  the  Court  of  Queen  Victoria.  We  find  there 
middling  Germans,  middling  Italians,  middling  French- 
men— and  all  receiving  money  and  honour  from  our 
Queen.  The  Queen  and  the  Prince  Consort  do  not 
seem  to  have  been  indifferent  to  art,  but  to  have 
deliberately,  and  with  rare  instinct,  always  picked 
out  what  was  most  worthless ;  and  regarded  in  the 
light  of  documents,  these  pictures  are  valuable ;  for 
they  tell  plainly  the  real  mind  of  the  Royal  Family. 
We  see  at  once  that  the  family  mind  is  wholly  devoid 
of  humour  ;  the  very  faintest  sense  of  humour  would 
have  saved  them  from  exhibiting  themselves  in  so 
ridiculous  a  light.  The  large  picture  of  the  Queen  and 
the  Prince  Consort  surrounded  with  their  children,  the 
Prince  Consort  in  knee-breeches,  showing  a  finely- 
turned  calf,  is  sufficient  to  occasion  the  overthrow  of 
a  dynasty  if  humour  were  the  prerogative  of  the 
many  instead  of  being  that  of  the  few.  .  .  .  But  why 
should  not  the  Royal  Family  decorate  its  palaces 
with  bad  art  ?  Why  should  it  not  choose  the  most 
worthless  portrait-painters  of  all  countries  ?  Dynas- 
ties have  never  been  overthrown  for  failure  in  artistic 
taste.  I  am  aware  how  insignificant  the  matter  must 
seem  to  the  majority  of  readers,  and  should  not  have 

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raised  the  question,  but  since  the  question  has  been 
raised,  and  by  her  Majesty,  I  am  well  within  my  right 
in  attempting  a  reply.  The  Victorian  Exhibition  is 
a  flagrant  representation  of  a  bourgeois,  though  a 
royal,  family.  From  the  beginning  to  the  end  the 
exhibition  is  this  and  nothing  but  this.  In  the 
entrance  hall,  at  the  doorway,  we  are  confronted  with 
the  Queen's  chief  artistic  sin — Sir  Edgar  Boehm. 
Thirty  years  ago  this  mediocre  German  sculptor  came 
to  England.  The  Queen  discovered  him  at  once,  as 
if  by  instinct,  and  she  employed  him  on  work  that  an 
artist  would  have  shrunk  from — namely  statuettes  in 
Highland  costume.  The  German  sculptor  turned  out 
this  odious  and  ridiculous  costume  as  fast  as  any 
Scotch  tailor.  He  was  then  employed  on  busts,  and 
he  did  the  entire  Royal  Family  in  marble.  Again,  it 
would  be  hard  to  give  a  reason  why  royalty  should 
not  be  allowed  to  possess  bad  sculpture.  The  pity  is 
that  the  private  taste  of  royalty  creates  the  public 
taste  of  the  nation,  and  the  public  result  of  the  gracious 
interest  that  the  Queen  was  pleased  to  take  in  Mr. 
Edgar  Boehm,  is  the  disfigurement  of  London  by 
several  of  the  worst  statues  it  is  possible  to  conceive. 
It  is  bad  enough  that  we  should  have  German  princes 
foisted  upon  us,  but  German  statues  are  worse.  The 
ancient  site  of  Temple  Bar  has  been  disfigured  by 
Boehm  with  statues  of  the  Queen  and  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  so  stupidly  conceived  and  so  stupidly  modelled 
that  they  look  like  figures  out  of  a  Noah's  Ark.  The 
finest  site  in  London,  Hyde  Park  Corner,  has  been 
disfigured  by  Boehm  with  a  statue  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  so  bad,  so  paltry,  so  characteristically  the 
work  of  a  German  mechanic,  that  it  is  impossible  to 
drive  down  the  beautiful  road  without  experiencing 
a  sensation  of  discomfort  and  annoyance.  The 
original  statue  that  was  pulled  down  in  the  interests 
of  Boehm  was,  it  is  true,  bad  English,  but  bad  English 
298 


GEORGE    MOORE 


suits  the  landscape  better  than  cheap  German.  And 
this  disgraceful  thing  will  remain,  disfiguring  the  finest 
site  in  London,  until,  perhaps,  some  dynamiter  blows 
the  thing  up,  ostensibly  to  serve  the  cause  of  Ireland, 
but  really  in  the  interest  of  art.  At  the  other  end 
of  the  park  we  have  the  Albert  Memorial.  We  sym- 
pathise with  the  Queen  in  her  grief  for  the  Prince 
Consort,  but  we  cannot  help  wishing  that  her  grief 
were  expressed  more  artistically. 

I  do  not  think  I  need  ask  to  be  excused  for 
quoting  Mr.  Moore  at  such  length  :  these  re- 
marks of  his  are  quite  as  good  as  many  things 
that  Max  Beerbohm  wrote  in  The  Yellow  Book. 
Mr.  Moore,  however,  has  still  much  to  do.  He 
was  born  so  recently  as  1857,  and  although  he 
has  outlived  contemporaries  like  Gissing,  Wilde, 
Davidson  and  so  on,  much  of  his  work  is  still 
to  come.  A  final  criticism  on  him  would 
therefore  be  premature.  It  is  worth  noting 
that  in  1903,  after  he  had  become  connected 
with  the  Irish  Literary  Theatre,  he  renounced 
the  Roman  Catholic  faith,  it  being  stated  that 
he  did  so  on  Celtico-national  grounds.  At 
present,  however,  he  seems  to  be  dissatisfied 
even  with  Ireland,  and  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  if  he  lives  long  enough  he  will  graduate 
back  to  Paris  and  to  the  Roman  faith.  The 
effect  of  this  on  his  work  may  be  judged  from 
what   I   have  already  said  regarding  the  in- 

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ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

fluence  on  art   of   Protestantism  and  Roman 
Catholicism. 

When  dealing  with  the  Celtic  revival,  there 
are  two  names  that  no  critic  can  afford  to 
overlook.  One  of  these  is  William  Sharp,  better 
known  by  his  pen  name  of  Fiona  MacLeod ;  and 
the  other  is  Mr.  George  Russell — not  know^n  by 
this  name  at  all,  but  by  his  pseudonym  of  A.  E. 

William  Sharp,  whose  parents  were  Scotch,  was 
born  in  1855,  and  died  in  Sicily  in  1905  after 
a  life  which  was  marred  by  frequent  illnesses. 
While  he  was  still  a  young  man  ill-health  drove 
him  to  Australia,  though  he  spent  much  time 
in  the  Highlands,  and  he  settled  in  London  in 
1878.  Here  he  led  a  quiet  life,  meeting  well- 
known  writers  like  Rossetti,  Browning,  Pater, 
and  Meredith,  and  also  a  few  American  lumi- 
naries, such  as  W.  D.  Howells.  William  Sharp, 
the  critic  and  novelist,  suffered  from  a  particu- 
larly serious  illness  in  1886,  in  the  course  of 
which,  as  his  wife  tells  us  in  a  foreword  to  his 
collected  works,  he  dreamed  many  dreams  and 
saw  visions.  He  put  these  dreams  and  visions 
into  prose  and  poetical  forms,  and  published 
them  under  the  name  of  Fiona  MacLeod. 
The  first  of  these  books  was  the  volume  en- 
titled Pharais,  issued  in  1894.     The  Mountain 

300 


FIONA   MACLEOD 


Lovers  followed  in  1895,  rapidly  succeeded  by 
The  Sin  Eater,  The  Washer  of  the  Ford,  Green 
Fire,  The  Laughter  of  Peterkin,  The  Dominion 
of  Dreams,  and  a  volume  of  poems  From  the 
Hills  of  Dream.  He  also  wrote  two  dramas, 
one  of  which,  The  House  of  Usna,  was  performed 
by  the  Stage  Society,  and  his  later  books  under 
the  name  of  Fiona  MacLeod  included  The 
Divine  Adventure  and  The  Winged  Destiny, 

All  these  works  are  thoroughly  Celtic  in 
spirit.  Sharp  himself  thus  describes  Pharais 
in  a  letter :  '*  I  am  writing  a  strange  Celtic  tale 
called  Pharais,  wherein  the  weird  charm  and 
terror  of  the  night,  of  the  night  of  tragic  signi- 
ficance, is  brought  home  to  the  reader  (or  I  hope 
so)  by  a  stretch  of  dew-sweet  moon-flowers 
glimmering  white  through  the  mirk  of  a  dust 
laden  with  sea-mist/' 

In  a  preface  to  the  Tauchnitz  edition  of 
Wind  and  Wave,  he  explains  his  writings 
somewhat  more  fully.  Some  of  them  are  tales 
of  the  old  Gaelic  and  Celtico-Scandinavian 
life  and  mythology;  others  attempt  to  blend 
paganism  and  Christianity  ;  and  yet  others  are 
"  tales  of  the  dreaming  imagination,  having  their 
base  in  old  mythology  or  in  a  kindred  mytho- 
poeic  source.  .  .  .  Many  of  these  tales  are  of 

301 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

the  grey  wandering  wave  of  the  west,  and 
through  each  goes  the  wind  of  the  Gaelic  spirit 
which  everywhere  desires  infinitude,  but  in 
the  penury  of  things  as  they  are  turns  upon 
itself  to  the  dim  enchantment  of  dreams/* 

After  this  we  may  expect  to  find  Fiona 
MacLeod's  work  of  a  dreamy  description.  If 
Mr.  Arthur  Symons  interpreted  moods  for  us  in 
little  gem-like  poems,  we  may  perhaps  say 
that  Fiona  MacLeod  interprets  our  dream  moods. 
His  peculiar  gifts,  it  seems  to  me,  may  be  seen 
to  greater  advantage  in  his  poetry  than  in  his 
prose,  for  stories  about  Gaelic  mythology, 
mingled  with  dreams,  have  a  tendency  to  be- 
come tiresome.  In  his  poetry,  however,  he  is 
a  marvellously  subtle  interpreter.  The  follow- 
ing is  from  the  volume  entitled  From  the  Hills 
of  Dream  : 

In  the  secret  valley  of  silence 

No  breath  doth  fall ; 
No  wind  stirs  in  the  branches  ; 
No  bird  doth  call : 
As  on  a  white  wall 

A  breathless  lizard  is  still. 
So  silence  lies  on  the  valley 
Breathlessly  still. 

In  the  dusk-grown  heart  of  the  valley 

An  altar  rises  white  ; 
No  rapt  priest  bends  in  awe 

Before  its  silent  light ; 


FIONA   MACLEOD 


But  sometimes  a  flight 

Of  breathless  words  of  prayer 

White-winged  enclose  the  altar, 
Eddies  of  prayer. 

The  same  book  contains  a  section  called 
From  the  Heart  of  a  Woman.  Every  word  in 
these  poems  is  so  delicately  and  carefully  chosen 
as  to  remind  us  of  Horace,  and  to  quote  from 
the  longer  ones  would  be,  I  fear,  simply  to 
spoil  them.  But  there  is  a  short  one  entitled 
The  Vision,  which  is  quite  in  Fiona  MacLeod's 
manner  : 

In  a  far  place 
Of  whin  and  grass 
I  heard  feet  pass 
Where  no  one  was. 

I  saw  a  face 
Bloom  like  a  flower — 
Nay,  as  the  rainbow-shower 
Of  a  tempestuous  hour. 

It  was  not  man,  or  woman  ; 

It  was  not  human  ; 

But  beautiful  and  wild 

Terribly  undefiled 

I  knew  an  unborn  child. 

Subtle  interpretative  poems  like  these  must 
appeal  to  us  like  some  of  the  best  things  in 
Symons  or  Dowson ;  or,  to  take  another  ex- 
ample, which  is   not   so  far-fetched  as  might 

303 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

be  imagined,  the  Greek  anthology.  Daring 
indeed  would  be  the  critic  who  should  venture 
to  ''  comment ''  upon  them.  If  any  reader  of 
Fiona  MacLeod  is  gifted  with  the  subtle  poetical 
faculty  necessary  for  the  understanding  of 
these  poems,  they  will  sink  into  the  depths  of 
his  soul  at  the  first  reading  and  will  never  be 
forgotten.  If,  however,  the  reader  is  not  moved 
by  this  graceful  faery,  dreamlike  delicacy,  it 
is  greatly  to  be  feared  that  no  amount  of 
learned  exegesis  will  enable  him  to  appreciate 
a  man  of  Sharp's  temperament.  ''  I  will  set 
my  face  to  the  wind,'*  he  says  in  The  Divine 
Adventure,  ''  and  throw  my  handful  of  seed  on 
high.''  He  has  thrown  his  seed ;  what  it 
produces  will  depend  on  the  intellectual  soil 
on  which  it  has  been  cast. 

While  speaking  of  The  Divine  Adventure,  I 
should  like  to  put  before  the  reader  the  dedica- 
tion page  of  this  book  : 

THE   WIND,    SILENCE,    AND    LOVE 

FRIENDS    WHO    HAVE    TAUGHT   ME   MOST  : 

BUT   SINCE,    LONG   AGO,    TWO   WHO   ARE   NOT   FORGOTTEN 

WENT   AWAY    UPON    THE   ONE,    AND    DWELL,    THEMSELVES 

REMEMBERING,    IN    THE   OTHER,    I    DEDICATE   THIS   BOOK 

TO 

EALASAIDH 

WHOSE   LOVE   AND    SPIRIT   LIVE   HERE   ALSO. 

304 


FIONA   MACLEOD 


There  is  one  other  volume  of  Fiona  Mac- 
Leod's, however,  from  which,  to  do  him  full 
justice,  I  must  give  a  couple  of  short  quota- 
tions. Like  so  many  other  books  by  authors 
of  the  neo-Celtic  school,  it  was  apparently 
published  for  the  first  time  by  Mr.  Thomas 
B.  Mosher  of  Portland  (Maine).  It  is  to  be 
regretted  that  less  interest  is  taken  in  the 
movement  in  the  countries  of  its  origin  than 
three  thousand  miles  away.  The  volume  I 
refer  to  is,  of  course.  The  Hour  of  Beauty  : 

The  stars  wailed  when  the  reed  was  born 
And  heaven  wept  at  the  birth  of  the  thorn  : 
Joy  was  pluckt  like  a  flower  and  torn, 
,-— -^    For  time  foreshadowed  Good  Friday  morn. 

But  the  stars  laughed  like  children  free 
And  heaven  was  hung  with  the  rainbow's  glee 
When  on  Easter  Sunday,  so  fair  to  see. 
Time  bowed  before  eternity. 

Finally,  what  more  exquisite  conception  of 
day  and  night  could  we  have  than  the  following  ? 

From  grey  of  dusk,  the  vales  unfold 
To  pearl  and  amethyst  and  gold — 
Thus  is  the  new  day  woven  and  spun  ; 

From  glory  of  blue  to  rainbow-spray. 
From  sunset-gold  to  violet-grey — 
Thus  is  the  restful  night  re-won. 

One  of  the  most  poetic  of  modern  poets, 

20  305 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

and  consequently  in  an  age  like  the  present 
one  of  the  least  read,  is  Mr.  George  Russell,  a 
North  of  Ireland  writer,  who,  as  I  have  already 
stated,  is  best  known  under  his  pseudonym  of 
A.  E.  In  imagination,  or  better  perhaps  in 
fancy,  he  resembles  Fiona  MacLeod  ;  but  he  is 
less  preoccupied  with  Gaelic  or  Celtic  mythology. 
Few  men  have,  in  the  higher,  Nietzschian 
sense  of  the  word,  been  more  earthly  :  I  do 
not  like  to  use  a  more  common  expression 
and  say  that  A.  E.  approaches  close  to  nature, 
for  this  is  a  characteristic  of  bad  painters.  I 
need  not,  indeed,  endeavour  to  explain  what 
A.  E.'s  relations  with  the  earth  have  been,  since 
he  himself  has  done  it  so  well  in  the  poem 
entitled  Dust  in  that  remarkable  volume 
Homeward,  Songs  by  the  Way : 

I  heard  them  in  their  sadness  say 
"  The  earth  rebukes  the  thought  of  God  ; 
We  are  but  embers  wrapped  in  clay 
A  little  nobler  than  the  sod." 

But  I  have  touched  the  lips  of  clay : 
Mother,  thy  rudest  sod  to  me 
Is  thrilled  with  fire  of  hidden  day. 
And  haunted  by  all  mystery. 

A  line  or  two  from  A.  E.*s  preface  to  this 
volume  will  also  help  to  explain  his  poetical 
outlook  : 

306 


GEORGE   RUSSELL 


I  move  among  men  and  places,  and  in  living  I 
learned  the  truth  at  last.  I  know  I  am  a  spirit,  and 
that  I  went  forth  in  old  time  from  the  Self-ancestral 
to  labours  yet  unaccomplished  ;  but  filled  ever  and 
again  with  homesickness  I  made  these  songs  by  the 
way. 

A.  E.  did,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  set  out  on  a 
journey  through  Ireland  to  preach  paganism, 
I  know  not  with  what  results.  As  an  inter- 
preter of  earth  to  man,  however,  I  cannot  think 
of  any  poet  who  can  bear  the  slightest  com- 
parison with  him.  He  sees  as  many  moods  in 
the  earth  itself  as  Symons  does  in  man.  He 
sees  the  earth  breathing — one  of  his  volumes 
indeed  is  entitled  The  Earth  Breath.  He  sees 
the  earth  lying  still  and  sleeping  like  some 
gigantic  animal.  As  an  exponent  of  this  calm, 
hushed  quietness  he  has  soared  to  heights  where 
no  one  has  ever  preceded  or  followed  him. 
Let  me  take  two  more  poems  from  Homeward, 
Songs  by  the  Way,  as  instance  of  this  : 

still  rests  the  heavy  share  on  the  dark  soil : 
Upon  the  black  mould  thick  the  dew-damp  lies. 
A  horse  waits  patient :    from  his  lowly  toil 
A  ploughboy  to  the  morning  lifts  his  eyes. 

The  unbudding  hedgerows  dark  against  day's  fires 
Glitter  with  gold-lit  crystals  :    on  the  rim 
Over  the  unregarding  city's  spires 
The  lonely  beauty  shines  alone  for  him. 

307 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

And  day  by  day  the  dawn  or  dark  unfolds 
And  feeds  with  beauty  eyes  that  cannot  see 
How  in  her  womb  the  Mighty  Mother  moulds 
The  infant  spirit  for  eternity. 

Earth  lies  at  peace  and  no  movement  dis- 
turbs her  calm.  Yet  a  certain  progress  is  being 
made  all  the  time  :  the  infant  spirit  is  being 
prepared  for  eternity.  Outside  of  the  Vedas, 
where  has  this  thought  ever  been  better  ex- 
pressed ? 

In  this  volume  also  is  a  magnificent  little 
mood-poem  entitled  Awakening  : 

The  lights  shone  down  the  street 
In  the  long  blue  close  of  day. 
A  boy's  heart  beat  sweet,  sweet. 
As  it  flowered  in  its  dreamy  clay. 

Beyond  the  dazzling  throng 
And  above  the  towers  of  men 
The  stars  made  him  long,  long, 
To  return  to  their  light  again. 

They  lit  the  wondrous  years, 
And  his  heart  within  was  gay ; 
But  a  life  of  tears,  tears. 
He  had  won  for  himself  that  day. 

The  force  of  adulatory  superlatives  has  long 
been  weakened  owing  to  the  manner  in  which 
injudicious  critics  have  scattered  them  over  the 
ephemeral  productions  of  modern  novelists. 
Any  words  of  praise,  therefore,  which  I  might 

308 


GEORGE   RUSSELL 


shower  on  A.  E.  would  be  inadequate  to  convey 
to  the  reader  a  proper  conception  of  his  subtlety 
and  vigour — of  all  his  poetic  gifts,  in  fact.  It 
would  be  better  to  give  a  final  specimen  of  his 
work,  this  time  from  The  Earth  Breath.  The 
poem  I  have  in  mind  is  entitled  Janus  : 

Image  of  beauty,  when  I  gaze  on  thee. 
Trembling  I  waken  to  a  mystery, 
How  through  one  door  we  go  to  life  or  death 
By  spirit  kindled,  or  the  sensual  breath. 

Image  of  beauty,  when  my  way  I  go  ; 
No  single  joy  or  sorrow  do  I  know  : 
Elate  for  freedom  leaps  the  starry  power. 
The  life  which  passes  mourns  its  wasted  hour. 

And,  ah,  to  think  how  thin  the  veil  that  lies 
Between  the  pain  of  hell  and  paradise  ! 
Where  the  cool  grass  my  aching  head  embowers 
God  sings  the  lovely  carol  of  the  flowers. 

It  will,  I  think,  be  found  that  the  writers 
with  w^hom  I  have  already  dealt  in  detail 
have  been  the  direct  means  of  initiating  some 
new  movement,  either  in  thought  or  in  poetic 
form.  Mr.  Yeats,  Mr.  William  Sharp,  and 
A.  E.  may  be  said  to  belong  to  the  same  school, 
which  includes  even  men  so  different  from 
them  as  Mr.  George  Moore  and  Mr.  J.  M. 
Synge.  Of  this  school,  however,  each  of  the 
writers  referred  to  has  formed  a  different  branch. 

309 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Entirely  unconnected  with  them  is  Mr.  John 
Davidson,  a  man  who  has  formed  a  school  all 
by  himself,  and  remains,  as  yet,  without  fol- 
lowers— one  might  almost  say  without  even 
sympathisers.  John  Davidson  was  neverthe- 
less one  of  the  most  extraordinary  poets 
produced  by  the  last  generation.  He  was  a 
Scot,  born  in  Renfrewshire  in  April  1857,  and 
he  had  many  of  the  characteristics  usually 
associated  with  the  Scottish  intellect — a  meta- 
physical bent  and  at  the  same  time  a  great 
liking  for  physical  science.  He  was  buffeted 
about  by  the  world  from  a  very  early  age,  for 
when  he  was  only  thirteen  years  old  he  was 
sent  to  Greenock  to  work  in  the  unsympathetic 
and  essentially  prosaic  atmosphere  of  a  sugar 
factory.  Afterwards  he  served  in  the  office  of 
the  town  analyst,  and  here  he  acquired  a  love 
for  chemistry  which  always  remained  with  him. 
He  did  not  care  for  the  work,  however,  and  at 
fifteen  became  a  pupil  teacher.  In  the  eighties 
he  settled  in  London  and  produced  a  few 
dramas  which  included  Bruce,  a  Chronicle  Play 
(1886),  Smith,  a  Tragic  Farce  (1888),  and 
Scaramouch  in  Naxos  (1889).  A  dainty  prose 
romance,  Perfervid,  followed  in  1891,  but  his 
career  really  begins  with  the  publication  of 
310 


JOHN   DAVIDSON 


Verses  in  a  Music-hall  in  the  same  year,  and 
Fleet  Street  Eclogues  in  1893.  The  prose  pieces 
which  he  published  in  1894  and  1895 — Baptist 
Lake,  Earl  Lavender,  and  A  Random  Itinerary 
— hardly  concern  us.  The  lover  of  something 
new  and  yet  classical  in  literature  will  prefer 
to  give  his  attention  to  books  like  Ballads  and 
Songs,  the  second  series  of  Fleet  Street  Eclogues, 
and  New  Ballads,  published  in  the  late  nineties, 
and  the  remarkable  series  of  Testaments  which 
followed  early  in  the  present  century,  together 
with  plays  like  Mammon  and  his  Message  and 
The  Triumph  of  Mammon. 

To  deal  with  Davidson  fully  and  the  relation 
his  poetry  bore  to  the  English  culture  of  the 
period  in  which  he  lived  would  necessitate  a 
large  volume,  and  the  writer  of  such  a  book 
would  find  it  necessary  to  attack  something 
very  dear  to  the  hearts  of  pseudo-cultured 
people  of  the  present  day,  viz.,  the  materialistic 
English  science  of  the  latter  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  All  I  can  do  here  is  to  sum 
up  Davidson  as  concisely  as  possible.  To 
begin  with,  then,  he  had  the  imagination  of  a 
true  poet.  Some  of  his  descriptions  and  inter- 
pretations are  conveyed  to  the  reader  with  a 
delicacy  and  subtlety  which  we  must  pronounce 

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ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

to  be  little  short  of  marvellous.  We  have  but 
to  read  to  the  foot  of  the  first  page  of  Fleet 
Street  Eclogues  to  come  to  four  very  distinctive 
lines : 

From  the  muted  tread  of  the  feet, 
^  And  the  slackening  wheels,  I  know 
The  air  is  hung  with  snow. 
And  carpeted  the  street. 

This,  however,  appeared  in  one  of  Davidson's 
early  works.  As  he  grew  older  he  became  more 
and  more  preoccupied  with  science  and  religion. 
He  was,  if  we  may  use  the  expression,  the  only 
honest  atheist  of  his  time  ;  he  came  to  the 
definite,  deliberate  conclusion  that  religion  had 
been  outgrown — it  was  of  no  further  value 
either  for  comforting  human  beings  or  for 
stimulating  the  imagination.  With  a  logic 
which  in  the  circumstances  was  truly  admirable 
Davidson  then  put  religion  definitely  aside  and 
looked  to  science  for  the  benefits  which  had 
hitherto  been  conferred  on  mankind  by  faith. 
The  experiment  was  a  tremendous  one  and 
could  not  have  been  made  except  by  a  man 
who  possessed  very  high  intellectual  courage. 
In  Davidson  the  extreme  of  scientific  materi- 
alism was  reached,  and  the  pendulum  began  to 
swing  back.    With  the  publication  of  David- 

31^ 


JOHN    DAVIDSON 


son*s  most  scientifically  inspired  works  in  the 
early  years  of  this  century  there  came  into 
prominence  almost  simultaneously  two  men, 
who,  in  matters  of  faith  and  a  profound  belief 
in  God,  harked  back  almost  to  the  Middle  Ages. 
I  refer  of  course  to  Mr.  Hilaire  Belloc  and  Mr. 
G.  K.  Chesterton,  in  whom  the  humane  in- 
stincts of  the  wide,  all-embracing  Roman 
Catholic  Church  were  seldom  seen  to  better 
advantage.  They  are  not  troubled  with  ab- 
struse metaphysical  or  philosophical  specula- 
tions about  the  '*  thing-in-itself,*'  or  the  Zeit- 
geist, and  the  freedom  which  they  enjoy  in 
consequence  is  seen  in  the  exuberance  of  their 
writings  ;  but  as  they  do  not  come  into  the 
period  with  which  I  am  dealing  it  would  be  a 
digression  to  speak  of  them  at  greater  length 
here.  I  should,  however,  like  to  add  that  both 
Chesterton  and  Belloc  are  not  yet  on  a  thor- 
oughly safe  philosophical  or  religious  founda- 
tion, since  it  is  in  my  opinion  difficult  for  them 
to  reconcile  the  rather  Protestant,  and  conse- 
quently narrow  form  of  democracy  they  profess 
with  the  aristocratic  Church  to  which  they  both 
belong. 

John  Davidson,  however,  spent  many  years 
in  endeavouring  to  secure  a  foundation  for  him- 

313 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

self,  and  when  his  life  came  to  a  tragic  end  in 
1909  his  work  had  not  been  fully  accomplished. 
In  addition  to  devoting  himself  to  science, 
he  made  a  profound  study  of  the  writings  of 
Friedrich  Nietzsche,  who  left  this  Scottish  ad- 
mirer of  his  with  one  very  definite  opinion  : 
that  Christianity  was  the  enemy — the  enemy  of 
art,  of  order,  and  of  good  government.  Had 
Davidson  realised  that  Nietzsche's  severe  criti- 
cisms of  Christianity  were  directed  against  the 
Protestant  rather  than  the  Catholic  form  of 
the  religion,  the  effects  on  his  work  might  have 
been  different.  But  he  was  too  greatly  pre- 
occupied with  his  scientific  investigations  to 
give  any  attention  to  this  point. 

When  we  consider  Davidson's  work  in  the 
mass,  and  especially  his  poetry  and  plays  from 
the  early  nineties  onwards,  we  must  pronounce 
him  to  be  a  classicist — it  is  no  exaggeration  to 
say  that  even  in  his  very  features  he  showed 
traces  of  classicism.  There  will  be  few  readers, 
however,  who  will  not  complain  of  the  influence 
exercised  over  him  by  science,  and  made  par- 
ticularly clear  in  his  later  poems.  His  metre 
is  often  rugged  and  his  sentences  are  often  long, 
and  even  his  female  characters  have  a  way  of 
coming  on  the  stage  and  referring  in  somewhat 

314 


JOHN    DAVIDSON 


rocky  blank  verse  to  the  chemical  elements  of 
which  they  are  composed.  As  an  instance  of 
this  scientific  influence,  let  us  take  an  extract 
from  the  introduction  to  the  remarkable  book 
entitled  The  Testament  of  John  Davidson  : 

The  principal  constituents  of  matter,  that  is  to  say, 
of  eternity,  of  the  infinite,  are  carbon,  hydrogen, 
oxygen,  and  nitrogen ;  but  these,  with  the  other 
elements,  consist  of  lightning,  the  first  emergence  of 
the  ponderable  from  the  imponderable.  Lightning, 
with  its  poles  or  sexes,  essence  at  once  and  seed  and 
yeast,  secreted  in  drops,  or  cells,  or  electrons  the  first 
limitation  of  matter,  and  began  the  fermentation  in 
the  eternal  ether  which  was  not  to  cease  until  the 
appearance  of  the  invisible  universe.  No  sooner  had 
the  drops,  or  cells,  or  electrons  sprung  from  the  tension 
of  the  dark,  oblivious,  omnipotent  ether  in  eddying 
vortices  than  they  sought  an  equilibrium,  and  com- 
bined themselves  into  groups,  each  group  consisting  of 
an  array  of  negative  and  positive  electrons,  neutralis- 
ing each  other,  and  revolving  about  a  common  centre 
like  a  miniature  solar  system  ;  and  this  is  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  atom.  In  each  invisible  atom  tens  of 
thousands,  or  hundreds  of  thousands,  or  millions  of 
cubic  miles  of  the  primal  substance,  which  in  its 
tenuous,  imponderable  form  fills  space,  are  constringed 
into  the  ponderable,  garnered  up  and  packed  away ; 
every  atom  is  thus  a  repository  of  the  material  of 
eternity  and  the  fountain  of  all  force — physical, 
mental,  imaginative. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  dedication,  Davidson 
appears  to  look  upon  himself  as  inspired  in  the 
same  way  as  Nietzsche  did  when  writing  Zara- 

315 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

thustra,  and  he  tells  us,  or  rather  the  peers  of 
England  whom  he  is  addressing,  that  matter 
is  now  the  repository  of  the  highest  ecstasy 
and  of  all  knowledge,  adding,  **  This  is  the 
greatest  thing  told  since  the  world  began/' 
The  whole  Testament,  like  all  Davidson's  later 
work,  is  impregnated  with  this  scientific  spirit. 
He  tells  us,  for  example,  about  taking  his  ease 
in  heaven,  *^the  first  of  men  To  be  and  com- 
prehend the  universe  *'  : 

To  know  how  all  things  are  the  infinite 
Imponderable  ether  that  possessed 
niimitable  space  with  tension  (pure 
Spontaneous  energy,  the  pristine  state 
Of  matter  and  its  last  consummate  doom) 
Before  the  galaxies  with  silver  streamed 
The  swart  oblivion  of  the  universe. 
Or  pearly  nebula  began  to  glow 
Upon  the  sable  bosom  of  the  night. 

Scientific  this,  with  a  vengeance.  But  if  it 
be  thought  that  Davidson  was  incapable  of 
anything  else,  it  may  at  once  be  said  that  we 
can  match  this  scientific  poetry  with  something 
much  more  delicate.  Take,  for  example,  the 
following  from  the  volume  entitled  Holiday  : 

NOVEMBER:    LONDON,  W. 
Deep  delight  in  volume,  sound,  and  mass. 

Shadow,  colour,  movement,  multitudes. 
Murmurs,  cries,  the  traffic's  rolling  bass — 

Subtle  city  of  a  thousand  moods  1 

316 


JOHN    DAVIDSON 


Distance,  rumour,  mystery,  things  that  count, 
Bravely  in  the  memory  scored  and  limned  ! 

Sunset  welling  like  a  crimson  fount 

Underneath  the  Marble  Arch,  o'erbrimmed 

All  the  smoky  west.     In  Oxford  Street 
Lamps  like  jewels  fallen  by  the  way, 

While  the  sun  upon  his  urban  beat 
Bore  the  lofty  burden  of  the  day. 

Or  again,  take  this  Nietzschian  couplet  from 
Ballads  and  Songs  : 

Unwilling  friend,  let  not  your  spite  abate  : 

Help  me  with  scorn,  and  strengthen  me  with  hate. 

Or  those  remarkable  lines  in  The  Ballad  of 

a  Nun  : 

I  care  not  for  my  broken  vow  ; 

Though  God  should  come  in  thunder  soon, 
I  am  sister  to  the  mountains  now. 

And  sister  to  the  sun  and  moon. 

As  Davidson  grows  older  we  begin  to  note 
a  comparison  between  him  and  Gissing.  Both 
men  were  creative  artists  of  a  high  order ; 
both  were  scholars  ;  and  both  were  compelled 
to  live  in  an  environment  which  they  regarded 
with  the  utmost  dislike  and  dissatisfaction.  In 
this  respect,  however,  Davidson's  feelings  ap- 
pear to  have  been,  so  to  speak,  wider  than 
those  of  Gissing.  Gissing,  I  think,  would  have 
been  satisfied  had  his  merits  been  acknowledged 
earlier,  and  had  he  thus  been  enabled  to  take 

317 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

his  place  in  one  of  those  upper  strata  of  society 
in  which  he  felt  he  had  a  right  to  a  place — not, 
of  course,  that  he  had  any  social  aims  in  view  ; 
but  simply  because  he  felt  that  as  a  man  of 
intellect  he  was  entitled  to  move  in  the  best 
society  that  London  could  afford  him.  David- 
son, on  the  other  hand,  had  an  equal  distaste 
for  all  classes  of  society,  because  he  recognised 
clearly  enough  that  from  an  artistic  standpoint, 
every  social  grade,  in  England  at  all  events, 
was  uncultured.  Gissing  observed  with  sorrow 
that  the  cultured  public  was  a  small  one,  but 
in  so  far  as  I  can  judge  from  his  works,  and  the 
few  particulars  we  have  of  his  life,  he  appeared 
unable  to  lay  the  blame  for  this  state  of  things 
on  any  one  in  particular.  He  saw  the  fact  and 
regretted  it ;  but  he  seemed  to  believe  that  no 
individual  or  group  of  people  could  be  held 
responsible  for  it. 

In  this  regard  Davidson,  as  we  see  from  his 
introduction  to  his  Testament,  held  very  definite 
views.  He  observed  that  the  aristocratic  class 
in  England,  once  cultured,  had  gradually  be- 
come less  and  less  so,  and  he  ascribed  this 
degeneration  to  the  right  source,  namely,  Chris- 
tianity— a  point  of  view  which  I  do  not  think 
would  have  occurred  to  him  had  Nietzsche  not 

318 


JOHN    DAVIDSON 


written.  He  then  strikes  the  nail  on  the  head 
at  once  by  dedicating  his  book  to  the  peers, 
and  he  makes  a  definite  statement  in  the  course 
of  his  remarks  to  the  effect  that  the  prestige  of 
the  House  of  Lords  has  been  lowered  through 
Christianity.  Many  other  remarks  of  his  in 
this  dedication,  such  as  his  outburst  against  the 
"  ruse,  stratagem,  and  chicanery  ''  of  women, 
have  obviously  a  Nietzschian  root. 

This  dedication,  despite  its  form,  is  an 
autobiographical  document ;  but  not  so  direct, 
perhaps,  as  the  personal  note  added  by  David- 
son to  The  Temple  of  Mammon  : 

This  book  is  published  on  April  ii,  1907,  my  fiftieth 
birthday.  Nine-tenths  of  my  time,  and  that  which 
is  more  precious,  have  been  wasted  in  the  endeavour 
to  earn  a  livelihood.  In  a  world  of  my  own  making, 
I  should  have  been  writing  only  what  should  be 
written.  .  .  .  For  half  a  century  I  have  survived  in  a 
world  entirely  unfitted  for  me,  and  having  known 
both  the  heaven  and  hell  thereof,  and  being  without 
a  revenue  or  an  army  and  navy  to  compel  the 
nations,  I  begin  definitely  in  my  Testaments  and  my 
Tragedies  to  destroy  this  unfit  world  and  make  it  over 
again  in  my  own  image. 

With  this  bitter  preliminary  Davidson  pro- 
ceeds to  discuss  poetry  and  the  lives  of  poets, 
and  in  the  midst  of  quite  an  artistic  harangue 
we  meet  sentences  like  the  following :   "  Light 

319 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

is  matter,  and  sound,  being  isomeric  with  light, 
is  also  matter.  .  .  .  Sound  and  light  are  one 
and  the  same/' 

It  has  been  urged  against  Davidson  that  his 
poems  smack  too  much  of  science,  and  it  must 
be  admitted  that  there  are  passages  which  verge 
upon  the  ludicrous  owing  to  the  author's  in- 
sistence upon  chemical  formulae  or  new  theories 
as  to  the  origin  of  the  universe.  There  is, 
however,  no  reason  why  aristocratic  science 
should  not  be  treated  poetically.  In  the  later 
period  of  Latin  literature  there  was  another 
poet  who,  like  Davidson,  was  largely  influenced 
by  science,  and  whose  poem,  although  one  of 
the  noblest  ever  written,  deals  almost  ex- 
clusively with  various  branches  of  science.  No 
one  has  ever  complained  of  Lucretius,  however, 
that  he  was  too  scientific,  merely  because  he 
was  capable  of  producing  such  lines  as  the 
following  : 

Fulgit  item,  nubes  ignis  cum  semina  multa 
excussere  suo  concursu  ;   ceu  lapidem  si 
percutiat  lapis  aut  ferrum  :   nam  turn  quoque  lumen 
exilit  et  claras  scintillas  dissipat  ignis. 
Sed  tonitrum  fit  uti  post  auribus  accipiamus, 
fulgere  quam  cernant  oculi,  quia  semper  ad  auris 
tardius  adveniunt  quam  visum  quae  moveant  res. 
Id  licet  hinc  etiam  cognoscere.     Caedere  si  quem 
ancipiti  videas  ferro  procul  arboris  auctum. 


JOHN   DAVIDSON 


ante  fit  ut  cernas  ictum  quam  plaga  per  auris 
det  sonitum  :   sic  fulgorem  quoque  cernimus  ante 
quam  tonitrum  accipimus,  pariter  qui  mittitur  igni 
e  simili  causa,  concursu  natus  eodem. 

I  cannot  permit  myself  to  take  up  further 
space  here  by  drawing  an  extended  comparison 
between  Davidson  and  Lucretius.  A  long  com- 
parison could  nevertheless  be  made  without 
much  difficulty,  and  it  would,  I  think,  prove  a 
fascinating  one.  They  had  one  other  bond  in 
common  in  that  they  both  committed  suicide 
while  still  in  the  prime  of  life.  Davidson,  who 
was  worthy  of  his  great  predecessor,  was  like 
him  an  honest  atheist — a  man  who  had  cast 
aside  an  unsuitable  religion,  and  turned  to 
science  for  inspiration.  In  both  cases  the 
experiment  was  worth  making,  and  in  both 
cases  the  man  who  made  the  experiment  was 
a  poet  of  the  highest  order. 

And  now  our  survey  of  the  last  generation 
of  English  literature  gradually  approaches  its 
conclusion.  We  have  still  to  mention  a  poet 
who  was  important  in  his  own  particular  circle, 
Francis  Thompson ;  and  a  scholar  and  critic 
whose  failings  lean  to  the  side  of  generosity, 
Mr.  W.  L.  Courtney,  who,  when  criticising  the 
productions  of  modern  hack-writers  and  pseudo- 
21  321 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

creative  artists,  too  rarely  dips  his  pen  in 
vinegar. 

Francis  Thompson  was  born  in  Preston  in 
1859,  and,  after  spending  part  of  his  youth  in 
commerce,  settled  in  London.  He  was  never, 
of  course,  fitted  to  be  a  shopkeeper  or  a  trades- 
man, and  he  would  probably  have  passed  an 
even  more  miserable  existence  than  he  actually 
did  if  he  had  not  fallen  in  with  a  few  believers 
in  his  poetry  who  did  their  best  for  him — the 
Meynells  in  particular.  Thompson  was  fortu- 
nate in  one  respect.  His  first  volume  fell  into 
good  hands  for  review,  and  Coventry  Patmore 
in  the  Fortnightly,  H.  D.  Traill  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  and  Mr.  J.  L.  Garvin  in  the  Newcastle 
Chronicle,  praised  him  highly.  Arthur  Symons, 
too,  extended  his  congratulations  later  on  in 
the  Saturday  Review  :  ''He  had  no  message, 
but  he  dropped  sentences  by  the  way,  cries  of 
joy  or  pity,  love  of  children,  worship  of  the 
Virgin  and  the  Saints,  and  of  those  who  were 
patron  saints  to  him  on  earth.  .  .  .  Other 
poets  of  the  time  have  had  deeper  things  to  say, 
and  a  more  flawless  beauty ;  others  have  put 
more  of  their  hearts  into  their  song ;  but  no 
one  has  been  a  torch  waved  with  so  fitful  a 
splendour  over  the  gulfs  of  our  darkness/' 

322 


FRANCIS   THOMPSON 


Like  most  of  Mr.  Symons's  criticism,  this  is 
to  the  point.  Francis  Thompson  was  a  nine- 
teenth-century Crashaw,  with  rather  more  fer- 
vour and  a  more  delicate  sense  of  language. 
He  was  a  Catholic  mystic,  and  set  out,  as  Mr 
Coventry  Patmore  has  told  us,  to  exploit  the 
inexhaustible  and  hitherto  almost  unworked 
mine  of  Catholic  philosophy.  In  this  respect 
one  of  Thompson's  most  characteristic  pieces — 
one  of  the  best  poems,  in  fact,  that  he  ever 
wrote — ^was  the  celebrated  ode  The  Hound  of 
Heaven,  with  those  fine  introductory  lines 
which  are  not  yet  sufficiently  widely  known  : 

I  fled  Him,  down  the  nights  and  down  the  days  ; 
I  fled  Him,  down  the  arches  of  the  years  ; 
I  fled  Him,  down  the  labyrinthine  ways 

Of  my  own  mind  ;   and  in  the  mist  of  tears 
I  hid  from  Him,  and  under  running  laughter. 
Up  vistaed  slopes  I  sped  ; 
And  shot,  precipitated, 
Adown  Titanic  glooms  of  chasmdd  fears, 

From  those  strong  Feet  that  followed,  followed  after. 
But  with  unhurrying  chase. 
And  unperturbed  pace, 
Deliberate  speed,  majestic  instancy. 
They  beat — and  a  Voice  beat 
More  instant  than  the  Feet — 
"  All  things  betray  thee,  who  betrayest  Me.'* 

If  this  religiosity  forms  one  side  of  Thomp- 
son's poetical  character,  the  delicate  way  he 

323 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

has  written  about  women  forms  another.  Sister 
Songs  and  Love  in  Dian's  Lap  contain  passages 
which  are  almost  perfect.  In  the  latter  section 
I  quote  a  few  lines  from  the  poem  entitled 
Her  Portrait : 

Yet  I  have  felt  what  terrors  may  consort 
In  women's  cheeks,  the  Graces*  soft  resort ; 
My  hand  hath  shook  at  gentle  hands*  access. 
And  trembled  at  the  waving  of  a  tress  ; 
My  blood  known  panic  fear,  and  fled  dismayed. 
Where  ladies*  eyes  have  set  their  ambuscade. 
The  rustle  of  a  robe  hath  been  to  me 
The  very  rattle  of  love*s  musketry. 

And  there  is  that  eerie  ending  to  A   Fore- 
telling of  the  Child's  Husband,  in  Sister  Songs  : 

Now  pass  your  ways,  fair  bird,  and  pass  your  ways. 
If  you  will ; 
I  have  you  through  the  days. 
And  flit  or  hold  you  still. 
And  perch  you  where  you  list 
On  what  wrist, — 
You  are  mine  through  the  times. 
I  have  caught  you  fast  for  ever  in  a  tangle  of  sweet  rhymes. 
And  in  your  young  maiden  morn. 
You  may  scorn. 
But  you  must  be 
Bound  and  sociate  to  me  ; 
With  this  thread  from  out  the  tomb  my  dead  hand  shall 
tether  thee  I 

To  a  Snow-flake  shows  Thompson  in  another 
vein  : 
324 


FRANCIS   THOMPSON 


What  heart  could  have  thought  you  ? — 

Past  our  devisal 

(O  filigree  petal !) 

Fashioned  so  purely, 

Fragilely,  surely. 

From  what  Paradisal 

Imagineless  metal. 

Too  costly  for  cost  ? 

Who  hammered  you,  wrought  you. 

From  argentine  vapour  ? — 

"  God  was  my  shaper. 

Passing  surmisal, 

He  hammered.  He  wrought  me. 

From  curled  silver  vapour. 

To  lust  of  His  mind  : — 

Thou  could'st  not  have  thought  me  I 

So  purely,  so  palely, 

Tinily,  surely. 

Mightily,  frailly, 

Insculped  and  embossed. 

With  His  hammer  of  wind. 

And  His  graver  of  frost." 

Need  it  be  added  that  Thompson,  too,  suffered 
from  poverty,  and  that  autobiographical  frag- 
ments like  the  following  are  occasionally  to  be 
found  through  his  poems  ? 

Forlorn  and  faint  and  stark, 
I  had  endured  through  watches  of  the  dark 

The  abashless  inquisition  of  each  star  ; 
Yea,  was  the  outcast  mark 

Of  all  those  heavenly  passers'  scrutiny  ; 
Stood  bound  and  helplessly 
For  Time  to  shoot  his  barbed  minutes  at  me  ; 
Suffered  the  trampling  hoof  of  every  hour 
In  night's  slow-wheeled  car  ; 


325 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Until  the  tardy  dawn  dragged  me  at  length 

From  under  those  dread  wheels  ;  and,  bled  of  strength, 

I  waited  the  inevitable  last. 

Then  there  came  past 
A  child  ;  like  thee,  a  spring-flower  ;   but  a  flower 
Fallen  from  the  budded  coronal  of  Spring, 
And  through  the  city-streets  blown  withering. 
She  passed — O  brave,  sad,  lovingest,  tender  thing  ! — 
And  of  her  own  scant  pittance  did  she  give. 

That  I  might  eat  and  live  : 
Then  fled,  a  swift  and  trackless  fugitive. 

Francis  Thompson's  prose  writings  include 
Health  and  Holiness  :  *'  a  study  of  the  relations 
between  Brother  Ass,  the  Body,  and  his  Rider, 
the  Soul."  This  almost  reminds  us  of  St. 
Francis,  whose  life,  indeed,  that  of  Thompson 
resembled  in  some  respects.  Books  on  Shelley 
and  St.  Ignatius  Loyola  also  came  from  his 
pen ;  but  it  is  as  a  poet  that  his  name  will 
endure. 

Mr.  W.  L.  Courtney  is  known  to  us  as  a  writer 
on  philosophical  subjects,  as  a  dramatist,  and 
as  a  literary  critic.  I  think,  however,  that  it 
is  above  all  as  a  scholar  that  he  will  be  re- 
membered. There  are  scholars  and  scholars, 
and  Mr.  Courtney  is  what  I  am  inclined  to  call, 
for  want  of  a  better  expression,  a  creative 
scholar.  He  corresponds  in  a  measure  to 
Wilde's  ideal  creative  critic.  He  reminds  us 
in  Letter   17  of   Rosemary's  Letter-Book  that 

326 


W.   L.   COURTNEY 


beautiful  things  are  not  only  difficult  to  create  ; 
they  are  difficult  to  understand.  *'  And  this 
is  a  thing  which  is  not  always  realised,  even  by 
those  critics  who  claim  to  be  interpreters.  The 
burden  which  a  great  man  lays  on  his  contem- 
poraries is  the  effort  to  comprehend  what  he 
means.''  It  seems  to  me  that  Mr.  Courtney 
has  kept  this  well  in  mind  in  what  is,  in  my 
view,  his  best  work — that  little  volume  en- 
titled The  Idea  of  Tragedy,  It  is  here  rather 
than  in  works  such  as  The  Literary  Man's 
Bible,  The  Feminine  Note  in  Fiction,  and 
Dramas  and  Diversions,  that  Mr.  Courtney's 
literary  gifts  are  seen  to  advantage.  It  is,  I 
think,  regrettable  that  he  oscillated  for  some 
time  between  creative  work  of  the  kind  I  have 
referred  to  and  the  critical  work  to  be  found 
in  his  earlier  books,  such  as  Studies  New  and 
Old,  Studies  at  Leisure,  and  Studies  in  Philo- 
sophy. True,  Studies  at  Leisure  contains  one 
of  his  best  essays,  that  on  Personality ;  but 
in  his  philosophical  outlook  Mr.  Courtney  has 
always  been  rather  too  Kantian  for  modern 
tastes.  This  book,  Studies  at  Leisure,  was  pub- 
lished in  1892,  and  contains  another  essay,  one 
on  Anatole  France,  which  I  think  was  what 
Nietzsche  would  have  called  too   '*  English " 

327 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

even  for  1892.  Certainly  we  have  now  passed 
the  stage  when  Dickens,  Scott,  and  Thackeray 
could  be  ranked  high  as  creative  artists.  The 
essay  in  Studies  in  Philosophy  entitled  Back 
to  Kant,  and  that  in  Studies  at  Leisure,  en- 
titled Socrates,  Buddha  and  Christ,  will  give 
us  a  very  fair  notion  of  Mr.  Courtney's  philo- 
sophic outlook  at  the  time.  It  is  a  pity  that 
he  was  ever  attracted  by  Mill  sufficiently  to 
write  about  him. 

These,  however,  are  early  literary  sins,  and 
they  were  expiated  by  the  publication  in 
1900  of  The  Idea  of  Tragedy.  Since  then  Mr. 
Courtney  has  fortunately  given  less  attention 
to  metaphysics  and  ethics  and  more  to  creative 
work,  but  his  later  writings,  such  as  Rosemary's 
Letter-Book  and  In  Search  of  Egeria,  occasion- 
ally jar  on  one  because  of  what  might  be  called 
their  philosophic  Whiggism.  In  Rosemary's 
Letter-Book,  nevertheless,  Mr.  Courtney  was 
the  first  critic  of  any  standing  to  do  justice  to 
Miss  Maud  Allan's  dancing,  and  in  Letter  16  of 
the  same  book  there  is  a  comment  on  a  certain 
aspect  of  modern  writing  which  is  so  apposite 
that  I  shall  take  the  liberty  of  quoting  it : 

The  main  characteristic  of  that  which  appeals  to 
the  present  generation,  whether  in  novels  or  in  poetry 

328 


W.    L.   COURTNEY 


— in  drama  also,  and  to  some  extent  in  essay  writing 
— is  a  certain  crude  and  harsh  violence,  a  desperate 
desire  to  produce  an  effect,  and  to  produce  it  in  such 
a  masterful  fashion  that  the  nerves  tingle  with  the 
stram.  Take  the  four  volumes  of  the  collected  works 
of  William  Ernest  Henley,  of  which  I  am  mainly  inter- 
ested in  the  poetic  portion.  Take  the  novels  of  the 
successful  writers — men  like  Joseph  Conrad,  Edwin 
Pugh,  Arthur  Morrison — the  man  who  wrote  Tales  of 
Mean  Streets — the  essays  and  discussions  of  Bart 
Kennedy ;  some  of  the  writings,  too,  of  H.  G.  Wells. 
There  is  also,  over  and  above  these,  the  work  both  in 
poetry  and  prose  of  Rudyard  Kipling — the  swash- 
buckler of  genius.  Heaven  knows  how  much  these 
writers  differ  from  one  another  in  their  ideals,  in  the 
quality  of  their  writing,  in  the  nature  of  their  talents, 
as  well,  doubtless,  as  in  their  popularity.  But  I 
think  they  exhibit  one  common  quaUty.  They  are 
rough  and  passionate ;  they  strike  masterful  blows  ; 
they  exhibit  unrestrained  emotion ;  they  paint  with 
a  big  brush.  I  cannot  imagine  any  of  them  writing 
with  a  quill  pen  ;  they  probably  use  typewriters  and 
fountain  pens — all  the  modern  appliances  for  saving 
labour  and  urging  a  mad  career  without  stint  or 
pause.  The  French  adjective  criard  represents  the 
effects  they  produce — ^gaudy,  melodramatic,  showy, 
creating  conviction  by  their  unblushing  intensity, 
never  winning  their  way  by  sweet  reasonableness,  but 
forcing  us  to  agree  with  them  at  the  point  of  their 
literary  pistols.  That  is  what  I  mean  by  the  note 
of  violence.  At  its  best  it  is  called  *'  smart "  and 
"spirited."  At  its  lowest  and  worst  it  belongs  to 
that  region  of  *'  twopence  coloured  "  which  everywhere 
contrasts  with  the  modesty  of  '*  penny  plain.'*  And 
meanwhile  let  us  ask  ourselves  what  are  the  essential 
attributes  of  the  literary  art,  such  as  were  fixed  once 
and  for  all  by  the  classical  models  we  owe  to  the 

329 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Greeks.  Two  things  above  all.  Serenity  and  reserve 
— in  other  words,  the  quality  of  restraint,  the  dislike 
of  the  crude  and  the  morbid,  the  keeping  oneself  well 
in  hand,  the  artistic  limitation  which  prevents  un- 
reasonable display. 

Mr.  Shaw  will  no  doubt  be  interested  in 
that  remark  about  the  typewriter.  To  judge 
from  one  of  his  complaints  in  The  Sanity  of 
Art,  he  has  evidently  never  been  able  to  get 
a  machine  that  can  work  quickly  enough  to 
satisfy  him. 

Mr.  Courtney's  chief  fault,  as  I  have  inti- 
mated, is  the  fault  of  generosity  and  good- 
nature. There  are  some  writers,  such  as  Mr 
Wells,  whom  he  has  praised  a  great  deal  more 
than  they  deserved.  Added  to  this  is  his 
philosophical  conservatism — ^the  desire  to  up- 
hold that  school  which  is  typified  in  Kant 
as  against  the  school  typified  in  Nietzsche. 
Nor  is  he  in  many  cases  altogether  free  from 
traces  of  sentimentality,  and  an  acute  critical 
passage  like  that  which  I  have  just  quoted  is 
often  liable  to  be  found  in  what  I  should  person- 
ally regard  as  a  somewhat  uncongenial  setting. 
Despite  these  shortcomings,  however,  Mr.  Court- 
ney's wide  range  of  scholarship,  and  the  creative 
use  to  which  he  puts  it,  apart  altogether  from 

330 


L.    BINYON— ST.   JOHN   HANKIN 

the  interest  he  takes  in  humanity,  and  the 
appeal  humanity  makes  to  him,  entitle  him  to 
be  called  a  man  of  letters  in  the  fullest  sense 
of  the  expression. 

There  are  one  or  two  others  who  deserve 
mention.  In  looking  through  the  works  of 
Mr.  Laurence  Binyon  I  have  found  only  two 
lines  in  London  Visions  which  I  care  to  quote, 
and  I  regret  to  say  that  I  have  been  forestalled 
by  Mr.  Blaikie  Murdoch,  who  naturally  pounced 
upon  them  also  and  put  them  into  his  book 
on  The  Renaissance  of  the  Nineties  : 

Come,  let  us  forth,  and  wander  the   rich,   the  murmuring 

night ! 
The  shy,  blue  dusk  of  summer  trembles  above  the  street. 

Seldom  has  a  poet  evoked  more  delicately 
something  which  it  is  impossible  to  describe. 

Mr.  St.  John  Hankin  has  left  us  a  few  speci- 
mens of  drama  which  appeal  to  me  more  than 
anything  so  far  written  by  Mr.  Galsworthy  or 
Mr.  Granville  Barker.  In  his  Three  Plays  with 
Happy  Endings  (The  Return  of  the  Prodigal, 
The  Charity  that  Began  at  Home,  and  The 
Cassilis  Engagement)  he  exhibits  a  desire  to 
touch  upon  sexual  or  sociological  problems,  as 
he  also  does  in  his  The  Last  of  the  De  Mullins, 
but  in  every  case  he  is  saved  from  morbidness 

331 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

by  a  strong  sense  of  humour  which  makes  him 
give  a  *'  turn  '*  to  the  action  of  the  piece  which 
would  not  occur  to  Mr.  Shaw  or  to  Mr.  Barker. 
In  the  preface  to  the  Three  Plays,  Mr.  Hankin 
declaims  against  the  conventional  happy  ending. 
His  plays  do  end  happily,  but  not  in  the  sense 
in  which  the  expression  is  used  by  the  aver- 
age dramatic  critic.  People  who  should  get 
married,  and  who  would  get  married  in  the 
ordinary  play,  simply  become  lovers  for  awhile, 
and  then  part,  because  it  is  better  for  them 
to  do  so.  The  Prodigal  Son  ends  happily — 
for  the  son.  Mr.  Hankin  may  be  accused  of 
cynicism ;  but  if  we  admit  this,  we  must  add 
that  it  is  merely  the  cynicism  of  common  sense 
which  has  distinguished  men  of  the  world  like 
Machiavelli,  Napoleon,  and  Disraeli.  Apart 
from  his  plays  Mr.  Hankin  is  probably  best 
known  by  the  thin  volume  of  Lost  Masterpieces, 
These  parodies  are  almost  all  excellent,  but 
that  on  Robert  Browning  is  particularly  good. 
Significantly  enough  for  those  interested  in  the 
psychology  of  the  period,  Mr.  St.  John  Hankin, 
like  Davidson,  came  to  a  sad  end.  It  is  not 
so  very  long  since  he  committed  suicide  in  his 
chambers. 

Mr»  Richard  Le  Gallienne  naturally  belongs 

332 


RICHARD   LE   GALLIENNE 

to  this  period  also,  but  his  place  in  it  is  never 
destined  to  be  very  high.  His  work  is  to  the 
work  of  Dowson  or  Symons  as  paste  to  a 
flawless  jewel.  The  amorous  adventures  he 
recounts  in  The  Quest  of  the  Golden  Girl  are, 
to  speak  frankly,  rather  tiresome.  They  ooze 
sentimentality,  and  the  sentimental  ending  is 
dreadful.  Nor  is  the  book  which  he  published 
much  later.  Little  Dinners  with  the  Sphinx,  any 
better  in  this  respect.  In  short,  Mr.  Le  Galli- 
enne  cannot  be  called  an  artist,  though  there 
have  been  occasions  when  by  consciously  or 
unconsciously  imitating  poets  like  Dowson,  he 
achieved  a  result  which  may  be  called  passably 
artistic — such  things,  for  example,  as  the  four 
lines  entitled  Natural  Religion  in  An  Elegy 
on  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  and  other  Poems : 

up  through  the  mystic  deeps  of  sunny  air 
I  cried  to  God,  "  Oh  Father,  art  ThOu  there  ?  '* 
Sudden  the  answer  like  a  flute  I  heard  ; 
It  was  an  angel,  though  it  seemed  a  bird. 

There  are  one  or  two  little  things  like  this 
scattered  through  Mr.  Le  Gallienne's  writings 
which  will  not  irritate,  even  if  they  do  not 
greatly  please,  the  fastidious ;  but,  unfortu- 
nately, they  are  rare.  Single-speech  Hamilton 
was  wise  in  never  making  a  second  experiment. 

333 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

One  more  name,  and  I  have  done.  No  book 
of  this  kind  would  be  complete  without  at  least 
a  reference  to  Mr.  R.  B.  Cunninghame  Graham. 
Known  to  the  world  at  large  chiefly  as  a 
Socialist  who  took  part  in  a  celebrated  demon- 
stration in  Trafalgar  Square  in  1887,  Mr. 
Graham  is  known  to  the  few  who  read  as  a 
man  of  wide  travel  and  culture,  whose  book  on 
Morocco,  Mogreb-el'Acksa,  was  a  literary  event. 
Little  less  interesting  did  we  find  his  Vanished 
Arcadia,  a  history  of  the  Jesuits  in  Paraguay, 
and  the  reprinted  articles  and  sketches  in 
the  volume  entitled  Success.  Few  men  know 
Spaniards  and  Spanish-speaking  countries  more 
intimately  ;  few  have  described  them  better. 
Unfortunately,  Mr.  Graham  sometimes  leaves 
literature  for  politics,  and  then  he  sinks.  The 
clever  writer  of  such  pieces  as  The  Evolution 
of  a  Village,  or  Might,  Majesty,  and  Dominion, 
becomes  an  early-Victorian  Whig  when  he 
criticises  King  Alfonso  or  apologises  for  Ferrer. 
Still,  in  a  sterile  age  such  as  the  present,  a  good 
deal  can  be  forgiven  a  man  who  often  equals 
Shaw  in  directness,  and  Max  in  the  happy 
knack  of  combining  bitter  irony  with  quite  un- 
usual politeness. 


334 


CONCLUSION 


It  was  an  interesting  period,  and  it  is  not 
safe  to  prophesy  what  will  follow  it.  As 
always,  there  will  be  a  few  of  us  to  judge  books 
on  their  artistic  merits  alone,  and  there  will  be 
a  few  artists,  unknown  to  the  outside  world, 
who  will  write,  as  Gissing  did,  for  a  small 
public.  But,  so  far  as  the  great  public  is  con- 
cerned, English  literature  of  the  next  few  years 
will,  it  should  seem,  be  dominated  by  the 
novel ;  and  most  of  the  novel  writers  will 
follow  the  models  of  Mr.  Wells.  Shaw,  now 
having  become  a  popular  dramatist,  will  doubt- 
less influence  the  theatre,  particularly  through 
the  one-act  play.  1  cannot  see  at  the  moment 
any  signs  of  successors  to  Dowson  and  Symons. 
Crackanthorpe's  tradition  may  be  carried  on  ; 
but  so-called  realists  should  remember  that 
realism  is  not  confined  to  the  seamy  side  of 
life — a  fact  which  Crackanthorpe  himself  too 
often  overlooked.  In  the  course  of  the  next 
few  years  Nietzsche  will  beyond  all  doubt 
become  a  potent  force  in  England,  as  he  has 
long  been  on  the  Continent,  and  with  his  further 
study  here  critics,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  come 
to  recognise  the  sharp  distinction  between 
aristocratic  and  democratic  literature  :  form 
characterising  the  first  no  less  than  absence  of 

335 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

form  characterises  the  second  ;  the  one  being 
art,  and  the  other  pseudo-art.  The  age  of 
science  may  be  dead ;  but  we  must  look  to  it 
that  if  an  age  of  faith  is  to  begin  such  faith 
shall  be  aristocratic — Catholic,  if  you  like — 
and  not  the  narrow  Puritanism  and  Noncon- 
formity to  which  we  have  so  long  been  accus- 
tomed. Only  if  this  condition  is  fulfilled  shall 
we  witness  anything  resembling  a  renaissance 
in  creative  English  literature.  This  is  an 
essential  principle ;  and  the  leaders  of  such 
modern  literature  as  we  have — if  I  may  use  an 
expression  verging  on  the  colloquial — must  be 
educated  up  to  it. 

*'  Educate  educators,"  says  Nietzsche.  "  But 
the  first  educators  must  educate  themselves: 
and  it  is  for  these  that  I  write." 


336 


INDEX 


•'  A.E."    Sie  Russell,  Geo. 
Esthetic  movement,  the,  59 
Alexandrian    period,    its    char- 
acteristics, 18 
Alfonso,  Luis  de,  quoted,  237 
Aristotle  and  Nietzsche,  20 
Arnold,  Matthew,  his  position  as 

critic,  65  ;   quoted,  78,  157 
Art,  Oscar  Wilde's  views  on,  67 
foil. ;  "art  for  art's  sake,"  fal- 
lacy of,  70;  and  life,  74,  119; 
its  form,  76  ;   its  aim  accord- 
ing to  Oscar  Wilde,  83  ;    and 
realism,  iig. 
Artist,  the,  and  reaUty,  14,  237  ; 
his    development,     22    foil.  ; 
Wilde's  ideal,  69  ;    character- 
istics of,  220  ;   his  task,  236 
Austin,  Alfred,  279 

B 

Bab,  Julius,  quoted,  178 

Beardsley,  Aubrey,  and  the 
Yellow  Book,  109,  141  foil.  ; 
and  the  Savoy,  147  ;  his  char- 
acteristics, 149 

Beauty,  Pater's  view  of,  41 

Beerbohm,  Max,  in  the  Yellow 
Booh,  99 ;  quoted,  105,  124 
foil.  ;  on  Whistler,  151 

Belloc,  Hilaire,  181,  313 

Benson,  A.  C,  quoted,  43,  44 

Binyon,  Laurence,  331 

Browning,  Robert,  his  optimism, 

3 
Buddhism,  70 


Catullus,  quoted,  12 
22 


Celts,  their  humanism,  159 
Chesterton,  G.  K.,  on  Shaw,  182, 

204;   313 
Classicism,  its  meaning,  6  foil. ; 
and  reality,  15  ;  Pater  on,  47  ; 
and  romanticism,  distinction 
between,  69 
Coleridge,  quoted,  46 
Continental  influences,  152 
Courtney,   W.   L.,  his  leniency 
towards  bad  writers,  321  ;    a 
creative  scholar,  326  ;    essays 
and  studies,  327  ;  on  Tragedy, 
328  ;  on  modern  writing,  328  ; 
generosity,  330 
Crackanthorpe,  H.,  suicide,  2  ; 
Uterary   canons,    104 ;     char- 
acteristics  of,    117 ;    quoted, 
120  foil. 
Critic  as  artist,  Oscar  Wilde  on, 

79 
Criticism,  Wilde  on,  84. 


Davidson,  John,  his  suicide,  2  ; 
poems  in  the  Yellow  Book, 
109  ;  early  training,  310 ; 
first  prose  works,  311  ;  scien- 
tific and  rehgious  influences, 
312  ;  and  Nietzsche,  314 ; 
style,  314  ;  Testaments,  315  ; 
comparison  with  Gissing,  317  ; 
complaints  against  sociely, 
319  ;  comparison  with  Lucre- 
tius, 320 

Dome,  the,  98 

Dowson,  Ernest,  Lionel  John- 
son's poem  on,  135  ;  Arthur 
Symons  on,  136  ;  quoted,  137 
foil. 


337 


INDEX 


E 
Eye  Witness,  the,  i8 


Fabian  Society,  165 
Filon,  Augustin,  quoted,  193 
Fiona     MacLeod.     See     Sharp, 
Wm. 


Gissing,  George,  his  literary 
ideals,  253  ;  birth  and  early 
struggles,  254 ;  autobiography, 
255  ;  scholarly  temperament, 
256,  266  ;  main  theme  of  his 
books,  257  ;  first  novels,  258  ; 
travels,  259  ;  on  sex,  261  ; 
hardships  in  London,  263 ; 
visit  to  America,  264  ;  and 
Dickens,  265 ;  on  reUgion, 
267  ;  on  democracy,  269  ;  on 
science,  270;  death,  272;  an 
Itahan  sketch,  273  ;  artistic 
style,  276 ;  compared  with 
John  Davidson,  317 

Goethe,  influence  and  character 
of,  21 

Graham,  R.  B.  Cunninghame, 
334 

H 
Hankin,  St.  John,  331 
Harland,  Henry,  129  foil. 
Hegel,  influence  of,  on  Pater,  42 
Heine,  quoted,  11,  18 
Hellenism,  its  influence,  3 


Ibsen,  Shaw  on,  170  foil. 
Imagination  and  reason,  4 
IndividuaUsm,  evils  of,  247 

J 

Johnson,  Lionel,  in  the  Yellow 
Book,  107  ;   quoted,  133  foil. 

K 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  Oscar  Wilde 
on,  86  ;   279 


Le  Gallienne,  Richard,  332 

Leonardo,  Pater  on,  33 

Lessing,  his  influence,  18 

Levy,  Dr.  Oscar,  on  Shaw,  169, 
178 

LiberaUsm,  its  effect  on  litera- 
ture, 25,  158 

Literature,  English,  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  64  foil. ;  Con- 
tinental influences  on,  152 

Lucretius  compared  with  David- 
son, 320 

Ludovici,  A.  M.,  quoted,  72,  74 

M 

MacLeod,  Fiona.  See  Sharp, 
Wm. 

MateriaHsm,  philosophy  of,  64 

Melancholy  in  EngUsh  litera- 
ture, I 

Moods  in  art,  83,  84 

Moore,  George,  autobiography 
of,  290  ;  and  the  Irish  Liter- 
ary Theatre,  290  ;  style,  291  ; 
on  Yeats,  293  ;  as  novelist, 
294  ;  as  playwright  and  art 
critic,  295;  and  Roman' 
Cathohcism,  299 

Murdoch,  Blaikie,  quoted,  3,  331 

N 
National  Observer,  the,  98 
Neo-Platonism,  19 
New  Age,  the,  98,  169,  184,  246 
Nietzsche,  and  the  Alexandrian 

age,    19;     quoted,    28;     and 

Shaw,  163 
Novel,  the,  as  a  form  of  art,  219 
Novehst,  the,  and  his  problem, 

237 


Pageant,  the,  98 

Pater,  Walter,  his  influence,  6, 
57 ;  habits  and  characteristics, 
29  foil.  ;  Studies  in  the  Re- 
naissance, quoted,  31,  33  ;  his 
aim    in    art,    36 ;     autobio- 


338 


INDEX 


graphical  remarks,  40  ;  meta- 
physical studies,  42 ;  and 
Hegel,  42  ;  anecdotes  of,  44, 
45 ;  Marius  the  Epicurean, 
49  foil.  ;  his  sexuahty,  52  ; 
Imaginary  Portraits,  56 ;  Plato 
and  Platonism,  57 ;  Greek 
Studies,  57 ;  his  style,  58  ; 
Wilde  on,  81  ;  Arthur  Symons 
on,  114 

Philosophy,  necessity  for,  5  ; 
in  the  eighties,  6 ;  and 
materialism,  64 

Plato,  and  Nietzsche,  20 ;  in- 
fluence on  Wilde,  21  ;  general 
influence,  71 

Puritanism,  103,  156 

R 

ReaUsm,  119 

ReaHty  and  the  artist,  14 

Reason  and  art.  85 

Reformer,    the,    characteristics 

of,  160 
Rehgion,  its  influence,  3 
Renaissance,  the,  2 
Romanticism,    its    meaning,    6 

foil. ;   in  Germany,  9,  17,  48  ; 

and  reality,  16  ;  spread  of,  25  ; 

Pater  on,  47  ;  in  France,  48 
Ruskin,  his  influence,  6 
Russell,  Geo.  ("A.  E."),  his  out- 
look, 306 ;  and  paganism,  307  ; 

interpretation  of    the    earth, 

308 


Savoy,  the,  98 

Sex,  its  unimportance,  224 

Sharp,  Wm.   (Fiona  MacLeod), 

early  works,  300  ;    his  Celtic 

spirit,    301  ;     dreamy    style, 

302 ;     interpretative    ability, 

304 
Shaw,  George  Bernard,  his  long 
prefaces,  16  ;  thought  of  his 
time,  154  ;  his  descent,  159  ; 
early  errors,  160  ;  as  reformer, 
161 ;  inartistic  traits  in,  162  ; 


and  Nietzsche,  163  ;  his  new 
ideas,  163-5  '>  Fabian  Tracts, 
165,  170,  179  ;  early  novels, 
166 ;  intellectual  influences 
on,  169  ;  his  characters,  169, 
185  ;  on  Ibsen,  170  foil.  ;  his 
plays,  174  foil.  ;  the  "  Lif^ 
Force,"  178,  182  foil. ;  Juliua 
Bab  on,  178  ;  on  economics 
and  art,  179;  his  ideal  State, 
181  ;  on  democracy,  182  ;  as 
romanticist,  189 ;  and  the 
music  halls,  194  ;  his  wit,  194  ; 
on  modern  civihsation,  195  ; 
the  superman,  196  ;  on  sex, 
197  ;  on  marriage,  198  ;  pro- 
paganda on  the  stage,  200  ; 
our  indebtedness  to  him,  201  ; 
and  Scandinavia,  202 ;  and 
the  public,  203,  dispute  with 
Mr.  Wells  on  Fabian  aims,  246 
Sherard,  R.  H.,  quoted,  90 
Sociahsts,  their  imagination,  158 
Swinburne,  his  cheerfulness,  3  ; 

Mr.  Waugh  on,  102 
Symons,  Arthur,  and  moods  in 
art,  84  ;    and  his  critics,  iii, 
116;    quoted,    112  foil.;    on 
Pater,  114  ;  and  Verlaine,  153 


Tasso  quoted,  12 

Tennyson,  his  optimism,  3 

Thompson,  Francis,  321  ;  early 
poems,  322  ,  style,  323 ; 
autobiographical  fragments, 
325  ;  prose  writings,  326 

Tragedies,  literary,  2 

W 

Wagner,  his  romantic  music,  14 

Watson,  Wm.,  279 

Waugh,  Arthur,  quoted,  100 
foil. 

Webb,  Sidney,  his  economic  pro- 
posals, 181 

Wells,  H.  G.,  sexuality  in  his 
novels,  175  ;  as  reformer  and 
novelist,  206  ;    artistic  objec- 


339 


INDEX 


tions  to  him,  207  ;  as  artist, 
208    foil. ;     his    imagination, 

211  ;  contrasted  with  Jules 
Verne,    212 ;     his    character, 

212  ;    development  of  types, 

213  foil.  ;  his  ideal  novel,  217  ; 
Fabian  influences,  218 ;  the 
novel  as  a  form  of  art,.  219  ; 
and  morahty,  221  ;  axid  Sexual 
questions,  224 ;  his  New 
Machiavelli,  226  ;  and  women, 
230 ;  effect  of  his  writings, 
238  ;  his  sentimentality,  240  ; 
autobiographical  notes,  241  ; 
and  the  middle  classes,  242  ; 
and  the  Fabians,  245  ;  his 
ideal  State,  246 ;  personal 
characteristics  of,  248 ;  as 
scientific  story- writer,  249 ; 
his  de'finition  of  his  mind,  252 

Whistler,  150 

Wilde,  Oscar,  and  Pater's 
theories,  39 ;  the  aesthetic 
movement,  59 ;  birth  and 
education,  60,  61  ;  visit  to 
Greece,  61  ;  Ravenna,  62  ; 
Poems,  62  ;  Intentions,  62  ; 
literary     tendencies     of     his 


youth,  63  ;  and  the  middle 
classes,  66 ;  his  posing,  67, 
88  ;  his  Hellenism,  73  ;  views 
on  art,  74,  76  ;  on  criticism, 
79,  84  ;  on  Pater,  81  ;  epi- 
grams, 86,  87  ;  his  sexual 
perversion,  89  ;  later  works, 
94  ;  De  Pfofundis,  95  foil. 
Winckelmann,  Pater  on,  37. 


Yeats,  W.  B.,  first  visit  to 
London,  280,  and  Celtic  my- 
thology, 281,  283  ;  poems 
281  ;  and  the  Irish  Literary 
Theatre,  282  ;  mystical  ten- 
dencies, 284  ;  and  the  origin  of 
poetry,  285  ;  example  of  his 
work,  286 ;  as  playwright, 
288  ;  George  Moore  on,  293 

Yellow  Book,  the,  its  apt  title, 
I  ;  its  influence,  98  foil. 


Zola,  Emile,  a  romantic  realist, 
16 


Printed  by  Hazeli,  Watson  &  Viney,  Ld.,  London  and  Aylesbury. 


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